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THE AMERICAN 



TEXT-BOOK OF POPERY : 



BEING AN 



AUTHENTIC COMPEND 



OF THE 



BULLS, CANONS AND DECUETALS 



OF THE 



ROMAN HIERARCHY. 



" I WILL TELL THEE THE MYSTERY OF THE WOMAN, AND OF THE BEAST 
THAT CARRIETH HER." — Revelation, xvii. 7. 



PHILADELPHIA: 

PUBLISHED BY GRIFFITH & SIMON, 

114 North Third Street. 
1846. 



VA. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 

GRIFFITH & SIMON, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court in and for the Eastern 
District of Pennsylvania. 



Mrs.Hennan Jennings 
April 26, 1^3 



ADDEESS TO PROTESTANTS. 



The ominous controversy which the Papal priesthood have 
recently excited in New York and Philadelphia, combined with 
their mischievous exactions concerning the entire exclusion of 
the Holy Bible, and Christianity, with all ancient and modern 
history, from our Common Schools, imperiously demand an au- 
thentic exposure of the nature and extent of that universal 
supremacy and jurisdiction which the Roman Pontiff and his 
vassals of the Papal hierarchy usurp, as their jure divino inse- 
parable prerogative. 

Moreover, they are a self-evident testimony, visible among our- 
selves^ that the cardinal motive alleged by Pope Clement XIV. 
for the suppression of the Jesuits was righteous and replete with 
philanthropy. In his " Bulla," he denounced that entire con- 
federacy of monks and nuns, as a pestiferous band of conspira- 
tors, in bad reputation. " Universiurij'*'^ enacted that Pontiff, 
'' pene orbem pervaserunt molestissimcB contentiones de Societatis 
doctrinal — " The most direful contentions are diffused throuoh- 
out nearly the whole world by the doctrines of that society." 
Wherefore, by his alleged ivfallible authority, he abolished the 
order; solemnly affirming in his pontifical anathema, that the 
society of the Jesuits could not any longer be tolerated, as 
1* 



6 ADDRESS TO PROTESTANTS. 

" their existence is totally destructive of the peace and welfare of 
mankind.'''^ They poisoned him during the celebration of mass, 
as the reward for his noble act ! 

Our national principles include a total severance between the 
ecclesiastical and temporal relations of the citizens, leaving the 
rights of conscience untrammelled. Thus the spiritual condition 
of each individual with his Creator and Judge, is not subject to 
any human arbitrament ; and consequently the various Christian 
communities have not any direct connection with the civil gov- 
ernment, except that which is comprised in their perfect equality 
of privileges, and the protection which is secured to them by the 
laws of the Republic. 

That statement, however, is altogether inapplicable to the 
Romanists, whose nominal religious system openly interferes 
with our municipal and federal institutions. Their superstition 
and their politics are identical ; and as they acknowledge the 
authority of the Pope to be entire and supreme, as the Lord of 
their consciences ; it is absolutely impossible that, in their allegi- 
ance and predilections, the Papists can either believe the theories, 
or any farther than as they are coerced, be subject to the govern- 
ment of our national confederacy. 

Romanism, in its merely secular attributes and political and 
social effects, ever and immutably is opposed to civil and religious 
freedom ; and is destructive of all those rights of man which our 
Declaration of Independence proclaims to be inalienable. In this 
aspect, and as connected with the purity and patriotism of our 
citizens, it is essential that the genuine character of the pretended 
instructions given to youth in the Jesuit seminaries, should 
faithfully be unfolded. 

A conventual establishment has recently been organized near 
New York, called a college for boys. Of that most pernicious 
seminary, the domestic department is managed by nuns from 
France and Spain, domiciliated with the Roman priests. The 
boys are allowed to visit their parents or guardians only once in 
three months. Every letter dispatched or received from that 



ADDRESS TO PROTESTANTS. 7 

monastery is broken open and read, and delivered or destroyed, 
as may best enable those priests to deceive the friends and en- 
slave the pupil. The Sacred Volume, w^ith every other work 
inculcating " practical piety and Christian morals," is excluded 
from that unholy residence ; which, like its woful counterparts, 
nunneries, is " the sepulchre of goodness, and the castle of 
misery y 

In those Institutes, youth are deprived of all that knov/ledge 
which alone can sweeten them for social usefiilness. There ^ 
they learn that irreligion, with those arts of deception, which 
form a character and habits that are diametrically opposed to 
their future relations as American citizens. — Pages 219 to 289 ; 
300 to 316 ; 330 to 371 ; and 446 to 455. 

Multiplied facts and evidences will be found in this volume, 
all of which are authentic proofs from standard authorities, that 
the statement made by De Pradt, the late Roman Archbishop 
of Malines, is oracular : — " Jesuitism is the leaven which inces- 
santly foments and embitters everything. Jesuitism proscribes 
general instruction as too favorable for the expansion of light 
among the people. It assigns tuition for males, to priests only ; 
and for females, to nuns. It condemns the liberty of the press 
as Pandora's box, the source of every species of evil. It is the 
natural enemy of progressive knowledge and freedom ! Human 
society is fearfully menaced by the Jesuits, for the dissemination 
of their principles engenders and promotes private profligacy and 
public collisions and disorders." That paragraph was published 
at Brussels nearly twenty years ago ; yet such is the unchange- 
able identity of Romanism, that it is an equally accurate delinea- 
tion of the iniquitous system now in New York, as then in 
Belgium. 

At the end of the Creed of Pope Pius IV., which is the ex- 
plicit summary of the Romish faith, and to which all prelates, 
priests and people publicly testify their assent without any quali- 
fication, are these words : — " I receive all things delivered, de- 
fined and declared by the canons and councils, and particularly 



8 



ADDRESS TO PROTESTANTS. 



by the Council of Trent ;" and to it they swear, with the pro- 
mise that they will '' procure, as far as lies in their power, that 
all other persons shall hold the same." 

This general oath includes the ensuing particulars : 

1. They claim unrestricted sovereignty for the Pope, "in 
spirituals and in temporals, over all things celestial, terrestrial, 
and infernal." 

2. They assert, that the Pope has authority to overthrow all 
national governments, to absolve the people from their allegi- 
ance ; that Roman prelates and priests are not subject to any civil 
jurisdiction or power ; and that all Protestant rulers are abso- 
lutely usurpers. 

3. They afEi-m that the Roman prelates and priests have the 
authority to absolve men from their oaths, and that perjury is 
not a crime. 

4. They constantly teach, that all persons who are not papists 
ought to be killed! This is one clause in the oath that every 
Roman prelate and priest takes when he is inducted into his 
office. "Hereticos, schismaticos, et rebelles Domino nostro vel 
successonhus^ pro posse persequar et impugnabo.'^^— Heretics^ schis- 
matics and rebels to our lord the Pope, and his successors, I will 
to my utmost ability oppose and persecute. — Page 184-186. 
The same oath there recorded in full, with the clause just cited, 
in those very identical words, was publicly taken in New York, 
on March 10, 1844, in the mass-house in Mott-street, by the 
three Jesuit priests who then were made Popish prelates, in the 
presence of thousands of witnesses. Wherefore all Romanists 
are constantly taught, that it is highly mentonous to murder all 
Protestants, when it can be done with impunity ; and the same 
death-dealing wickedness is expressly enforced in the Annota- 
tions of the Rhemish New Testament. 

During the stormy polemical agitation in Britain, about eight- 
een years ago, respecting the relaxation of the coercive Jaws 
concerning the Papists in Ireland, Mr. Butler, a Romanist, issued 



ADDRESS TO PROTESTANTS. 9 

several publications, expressly designed to impose upon all per- 
sons who were not thoroughly conversant with the arcana of 
Popery, and its unchangeable corruption and treachery. The bulls, 
canons, and decretals of the Vatican were boldly denied. Dog- 
mas, authenticated by all the approved Papal writers, and ratified 
by pontifical rescripts, were disavowed. Historical events, narrat- 
ed by antiquated Roman annalists themselves, several centuries 
ago, as undisputed verities, were denounced as modern Protestant 
forgeries. Facts, publicly attested with all the certainty of moral 
demonstration, were so perverted and misrepresented by him and 
his consociates, that at last Robert. .Southey, the poet, no longer 
willing to tolerate such daring tergiversation, addressed a series 
of ^'Letters to Charles Butler, '^'^ One passage in his volume is 
peculiarly adapted to the present period. Withput any difficulty, 
an ordinary reader might suppose that Southey was merely de- 
picting the visible reality in this republic. He describes the 
creed of the Romish priests who are sent away from Maynooth 
Monastery in Ireland to the United States ; demonstrating that 
they all arrogantly claim the entire power which the Popes dur- 
ing more than a thousand years usurped over the Christian 
Churches and the whole world ; and through which Gregory 
VII. and his successors in the Vatican, from the eleventh to the 
seventeenth century, desolated all Europe. The poet, in his casti- 
gation of Mr. Butler's duplicity, adverted particularly to the final 
clause of the Creed of Pope Pius IV., page 244. In reference 
to its requirements and obligations, and the practical results of 
the Papist oath, Mr. Southey (pages 25-30) thus announced 
the startling truth. 

" Among those things ' delivered, defined, and declared by the 
canons and general councils,' which the Romanists receive at 
this time without distinction, the most daring assumptions of tem- 
poral power by the Papacy are contained ; and the most intoler- 
ant opinions respecting those whom the Romanists call heretics 
are expressly avowed. That the Pope may absolve subjects 
from their allegiance, depose magistrates, and give their domi- 



10 ADDRESS TO PROTEST AiSTS. 

nion to Papists, to be enjoyed by them when they have extermi- 
nated the heretics, was decreed by the fourth Lateran Council 
and acted upon by the Popes. (Decret. Pope Gregat-y IX. ^ lib. 
5, tit. 7 ; De Hereticis) . 

^' The Council of Constance pronounced that faith was not to 
be kept with heretics ; and men who had been trained in the 
Romish religion would desire no better authority for requiring 
that detestable breach of faith than the decretals afforded them. 
(Far. II. J Caus. 22y Quest. 4). ' Non est observandum jura- 
mentuni quo malum incaute 'permittitur ."^ — An oath should not be 
kept if injury incautiously may arise from it. ' Non omnia pro- 
missa sohenda sant."^ — All promises are not to be kept. ' JVon 
observantur jur amenta qucB fiunt contra divina mandata.'^ — Oaths 
against the divine commandments are not to be observed. ^ ^li- 
quando non expedit promissum servare sacr amentum."^ — Sometimes 
it is inexpedient to keep an oath. This is proved in the Deere- j 
tals by the example of Herod's oath to Herodias ; whence it is \ 
held as great a sin to let a heretic escape as to put a prophet to 
death. 

" The Council of Trent sanctioned the declaration of Pope 
Pius v., that heretics and schismatics are still in the poiver of the 
Churchy as persons to be called by it to judgment, punished and 
doomed by anathema to excommunication, that is, accursed. 
That same principle is now taught at Maynooth. In the treatise 
De Ecclesid Christi^ pa^'e 394, are the following words : ' JEc- 
clesia suam retinet jurisdictionem in omnes apostatasj hereiicoSj 
schismaticosj quanquam ad illius corpus non jam pertineant.'^ — 
The Church retains its jurisdiction over all apostates^ heretics^ 
and schismatics^ though they no longer belong to its body. j| 

" In that clause of the Creed of Pope Pius IV., it is enjoined 
as a religious duty upon the Papists to promote the Roman faith 
as much as may be in their power. There is no mention made in 
that Creed of the means whereby they are to promote it ; but in 
those Decretals all things are delivered and declared which are 
received in that comprehensive confession. ' Hcretici ad salu- 



ADDRESS TO PROTESTANTS. 11 

tem inviti sunt trahendi.'^ — Heretics, however unwilling, are to be 
brought by force. ' JScclesia rations persequitur hereticos.'^ — The 
Church must persecute heretics. ' EcclesiasticcB religionis 
i7ii?nici hellis sunt coercendi.'^ — Enemies of the Popedom must be 
coerced by arms. (Decret.yPars IL, Cans. 23, Quest. 4). 

" That creed comprehends an acknowledgment of the tempo- 
ral authority of the Popes, of their power to depose kings, and 
to absolve subjects from their allegiance. It includes an assent 
to these propositions : Faith is not to ee kept with here- 
tics. ' Simulatio utilis est et in tempore assumenda.^ — (Decret,^ 
Pars II. J Caus.22j Quest. 2). — Simulation is lawful. 'Nan 
sunt homicidce qui adversus excommunicatos armantur.'^ — (Decret.^ 
Pars II J Caus. 23, Quest. 5). — They are not homicides who 
kill excommunicated persons. Upon those principles the Papal 
priesthood have acted ; and their temper and doctrines are in per- 
fect accord with those principles. There are men now upon 
whom the mantles of Gardiner and Bonner have descended, who 
equivocate like Jesuits, and who would persecute like Domini- 
cans, if the power were in their hands. Those are the consist- 
ent Romanists, in heart and soul as well as profession, who 
assent to all that their creed comprehends, and would joyfully act 
up to the very letter of their laws." 

This was the judgment, not of a Protestant theologian, but of 
a recluse scholar. It comprehends the veritable and only solu- 
tion of all the barbarism, ferocity, pauperism, and debasement of 
Ireland, and of every other country on the face of the earth, 
where the Anti-Christian system of Rome bears unrestricted 
sway 

Ample proof of this general position may be found in this vol- 
ume. The solemn inquiry, therefore, now is urged upon us in 
all its unutterable importance, " Are the Romish policy and the 
morals of the Jesuits adapted to the citizens of our Federal Repub- 
lic ? A correct reply may be given to that question by all who 
will peruse the ensuing pages. 

New York, 1844» 



PREFACE. 



A REVIEW of God's dealings with mankind, in his providential 
government of the world, when conducted by the light of the hciy 
Scriptures, and in an humble and devotional spirit, cannot fail to 
mstruct the mind and meliorate the heart. But as the various 
generations of the human family are indissolubly conjoined in 
their identity of nature, the similarity of their moral and religious 
duties, and their destiny to an eternal state of existence, it is 
equally requisite to search the page of prophecy, as the volume ot 
history. To the performance of this momentous duty, the " Prince 
of the kings of the earth," has annexed his special benediction at 
the commencement of the Apocalypse ; which w^as revealed ex- 
pressly to demonstrate the certainty of the Divine Oracles, by pre- 
figuring the annals of the Christian Church, until the glorious 
millennial era shall enrapture the sons of Adam. " Blessed is he 
who readeth, and they w^ho hear the words of this prophecy, and 
keep those things which are written therein." A faithful narrative 
of the changes through which the visible Christian Church has 
passed, forms the most appropriate accompaniment for the Bible of 
truth, and the only sure guide to all other historical annals. 

If every book is characterized by defect, except the volume of 
supernal revelation, and if that defect is proportioned to the dis- 
tance at which. It is removed from the centre of perfection ; how 
important is it, especially to youth, that pure light should irradiate 
the heart, and the noblest of men be viewed as examples. We 
introduce our youth to the sacred scriptures as the first book, and 
instead of sanctioning the effects which it produces, by a course of 
reading which may corroborate the salutary impressions educed 
by the holy doctrines and lives of the departed saints, we transfer 
their attention from Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem, to 
Greek and Roman fables, which only augment the innate corrup- 
tion of the heart, 

2 



14 PREFACE. 

The object of "the glorious gospel of the ever blessed God," is 
to awaken in the soul of man that "fear of the Lord which is the 
beginning of wisdom;" and a deep impression of the immensity 
of the divine perfections, and of the truth of our responsibility. 
Hence a miad not predisposed thus to behold the government oi 
Jehovah in all sublunary affairs, may examine profane history, 
without knowing any God but the phantom of a mythology 
equally absurd and defiling ; and without contemplating any ex- 
emplars except men whose predominant passions and uniform 
conduct should never be adduced, except as a beacon to caution. 
But a knowledge of Ecclesiastical History increases the influence 
of the verities which a perusal of the sacred oracles imprints on 
the heart ; and therefore, an acquaintance with the prominent facts 
which have occurred amid the revolutions of Christianity is indis- 
pensable. 

The moral qualities of man are of the highest regard, and demand 
our primary attention. Nothing adventitious, whether in intellect, 
or station, or acquisitions, is truly deseccving of esteem, except it 
contributes to render the possessor more useful and beneficial in 
this state of probation, and to imbue him with superior qualifica- 
tions for the future immortality. Then to what sources of inform- 
ation must we apply for correct ideas of the Deity, especially in 
his government of the world 1 To those histories in which his 
perfections are ever recognized, and the diversified changes are 
attributed to the divine direction. To the holy Scriptures we must 
primarily, refer for that knowledge which is requisite to our sanc- 
tification and peace ; and if this instruction be all-important, it is 
an incumbent duty to assist the influence of those doctrines by 
the sanctions which they derive from their actual display m the 
lives and actions of men who professed to have been governed by 
them. A mind fraught with moral and religious influence, and 
enlarged by correct acquaintance with the history of the Church of 
Christ, is much better prepared to peruse with advantage the an- 
nals of the Avorld; and from the vivid and permanent sensibilities 
excited by the Gospel, and the delineation of its effects as em- 
bodied in the Martyrs and Reformers, he will be disposed to ad- 
mire the control of that supreme, invisible hand, which incessantly 
regulates the machinery of the Universe. 

The good and the evil are so indiscriminately blended in pro- 
fane history, that it is almost impossible .to separate them 3 and 



PREFACE. 15 

through that combination persons often contract an equal fondness 
for the vile as the precious, until the spirit of that unhallawed 
amalgamation becomes incorporated in their own hearts and 
practice. 

This pernicious consequence cannot attend the p]jj)per study of 
Christian history. In all important occurrences, and in every 
character of notice and interest, the line of demarcation is so 
plainly drawn, that it cannot become obscured. The distinctions 
between truth and error, vice, and virtue, rectitude and injustice, 
barbarism and philanthropy, are so lucidly exhibited, that it is 
impossible for the most superficial observer to commingle them. 
Consequently, in every step of his route, the Student finds a source 
of knowledge in application to his own character. His mind is 
insensibly, yet additionally impressed, with the importance, the 
benefits, and the celestial origin of the sacred books. In the an- 
nals of the church of Christ, the virtues of which man is capable 
are exemplified in their most amiable appearance ; and the vices 
to which sinners are prone, are displayed in all their undisguised 
and repulsive deformity. The natural darkness which beclouds 
the human mind, and the depravity which sways his soul, are 
clearly discerned; while in the effulgence of meridian splendour, 
we witness the expulsion of the mental gloom, and admire the 
wondrous transformation that opens the blind eyes and whitens 
the Ethiopian's skin. Christianity expands her archives, and pro- 
claims man, a creature destined for an immortal existence. This 
gives to ecclesiastical history a lofty superiority over all other 
details of nations. Every page is fraught with serious recollec- 
tions. We are reminded of the divine government, our personal 
<»bligations, our ineffable responsibility, the misery of an exposure 
to the wrath of the Lamb, and the extatic peace which accompa- 
nies the experience of the divine favor. The successive charac- 
ters which are depicted, furnishing either a caution to alarm, or 
an example to imitate, convince the mind ; because the grandeur 
and simplicity of virtue are intuitively separated from the tortuous 
baseness of vice. Thus, as in a glass, we behold the secret move- 
ments of our hearts, and the almost mysterious contradictions 
which adhere to the human character ; and, when it is subjoined, 
that since the period of Constantine's reign, the history of the 
Savior's kingdom includes almost all that intelligence which is 



ift PREFACE. 

truly interesting in the affairs of men, we have an irrefutable ar- 
gument for the review of Popery which is now proposed. 

The annals of the Christian church are equally adapted to slay 
the proud scorner's atheistic tendencies, and the timid disciple's 
unbelieving Jjerrors. We scan the record, and we mark the pre- 
sence of the supreme Jehovah. He who decides with rationality, 
can no more attentively reflect upon the historical pages of Chris- 
tianity, without a conviction, that he who said, '' Let there be light 
and there was light," has also commanded '• the light to shine out 
of darkness, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
in the face of Jesus Christ," than he can confute his own personal 
identity. But it is a melancholy, lamentable truth, that men gene- 
rally are altogether ignorant of this most necessary source of m- 
telligence, and they pretend to infidel scruples, because they shun 
the illumination in the beams of which their doubts and scepti- 
cism would vanish. 

The timidity of a sincere disciple may be fostered by similar 
negligence. We should deem it highly dishonorable for a child 
not to feel interested in some information respecting the resi- 
dence, habits, opinions and character of his ancestors. Impor- 
tant effects may flow from his intimate acquaintance with their 
past history. His corrupt propensities may be counteracted by the 
remembrance of their piety ; and his virtuous resolutions may be 
fortified by the example of their courage in adversity. It is much 
more the duty of every Christian to know the pilgrimage of his 
predecessors in the faith ; and hence the study of the holy Bible 
is continually urged upon us with the utmost earnestness, by 
precept, "search the scriptures;" and by example/^ the Bereans 
were more noble than those of Thessalonica, because they re- 
ceived the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the 
scriptures daily, whether these things were so." While we do 
not exalt the fragile records of the Church by human pens, to the 
authority or to an equality with the imperishable dictates of divine 
inspiration ; the former are supplementary to the sacred Oracles, 
and should maintain the second rank in our regard and attention. 

In the human heart naturally is found a disposition to disbelieve 
the divine existence, to discard the supremacy of God, to deny our 
obligations of obedience to his commandments, and to disown 
future retribution. The volume of celestial revelation was pro- 
mulged to exterminate those irreligious principles and sensibilities 



PREFACE. 17 

from the soul; and to implant sublime, consistent, reverential sen- 
timents concerning the Godhead ; with enlarged views of our 
character, duties and destinies as men : but as ar Coadjutor, the 
records of the Church present innumerable and most cogent argu- 
ments to arrest the influence of our unbelief, and to give energy 
to that faith " which overcometh the world." Thus an additional 
alterative is obtained against the mortal poison which creeps 
through our veins, and which must be extinguished or we die for 
ever. 

To the sacred volume we are instrumentally indebted for all 
our intellectual expansion, and all our social superiority over those 
nations where the Sun of righteousness has not yet arisen with 
healing in his wings. The moral maladies of the human family 
admit but one mode of cure, and the evils which originate in sin 
have hitherto been mitigated only by the Balm of Gilead, through 
the diffusion and reception of the gospel. Hence, every proper 
attempt to corroborate its truth, to illustrate its doctrines, and to 
enforce its injunctions, must be beneficial. But to what sources 
shall we apply for confirmation of the Book, except to the histo- 
ries which though written by fallible and uninspired men, confirm 
the divinely revealed oracles ? How can the precepts of Christ 
derive higher exemplary sanction, than by a delineation of that 
practical conformity which has been shewn to them in all ages by 
the most dignified members of the human family, and by an exhi- 
bition of the advantages which have invariably accompanied un- 
reserved obedience and fidelity to the law of Christ ? 

It has been sometimes intimated, that Christians receive the 
gospel from a sinister motive, which designates them hypocrites^ 
or from a weak intellect, which supposes them incompetent t» 
form a correct judgment. The disciples of Christianity dread 
nothing when contrasted with their enemies, either in virtue, or 
illumination : and it will be no small acquisition, could this efiect 
alone be produced by the following illustrations of Popery — an 
unshaken conviction, that with the sincere reception of Christianity 
are indissolubly combined, devotion, purity of heart, enlargement 
of the understanding, present comfort, and the assured anticipations 
of felicity everlasting. In this portion of human annals the sacred 
volume is copiously elucidated. Every perfection of the Deity is 
displayed. The attributes of the Mediator's government are un- 
folded. Prophecy appears fulfilled. There we behold demonstra- 

2* 



18 PREFACE. 

ted "that in the way of righteousness is life, and in the pathway 
thereof is no death." The pilgrimage to Canaan is so lucidly 
marked, that the traveller is cheered with additional resplendency, 
and the gates of Paradise are brought within the vision of his 
enraptured soul and invigorated capacities. Thus admitting the 
Divine word as our only authorized standard of all religious opin- 
ions and actions, yet we shall discover in the progressive stages 
of our scrutiny, continual reason to adore the High and Lofty One 
who inhabits eternity, to love the munificent Savior, to honor 
tlie blessed dead who have died in the Lord ; and shall receive 
confirmation of our faith, and instruction in our duty, while our 
hearts ennobled and enlightened by those grand exemplars, may 
thereby " grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and 
Savior Jesus Christ." 

In the most eventful and perilous storms of persecution, with 
which Jehovah has permitted his sheep to be agitated and wor- 
riea ; it was a proverb, that became at last, from its long exem- 
plified truth, a Christian axiom, "the blood of the martyrs is the 
seed of the church." In this aspect, how worthy of all our devo- 
tion and confidence, does that King of saints appear, who from 
the conflagration of his adopted children could produce the con- 
version of their executioners, and by the murder of Christians 
could quicken blind, dead idolaters, to spiritual sight and life ! Are 
your affections dull, your intellects benumbed, and the powers of 
the soul torpid? fly to Jerusalem. Hear Stephen, the Proto-mar- 
tyr, whose wisdom and spirit were irresistible, and who "full of 
faith and power did great wonders and miracles." Mark the rage 
of his envenomed Judges, they gnash on him with their teeth. — 
Listen to his defence. Watch him — his eyes are elevated to the 
heavens. Those heavens he saw opened, and the crucified Mes- 
siah enthroned in celestial glory. The rage of his enemies could 
no longer be restrained, they silenced his eloquence by their 
shouts, stopped their ears, forcibly seized him, dragged him out of 
the city, and there stoned him into Paradise. His dying confi- 
dence^ " the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God" to 
receive his spirit. His last words, the prayer of affection for his 
deluded assailants. Every particle of the narrative inspires devo- 
tional sensibilities. There the presence of the adorable Jesus, 
"Him who is exalted Prince and Savior," in his people^s dis- 
tress, was unequivocally attested, to encourage our confidence. 



PREFACE. 10 

There the natural enmity of the human heart against revealed 
truth was distinctly exemplified, to excite our vigilance against 
the intrusions of that unhallowed temper. There the spirit of 
Christianity was triumphantly displayed, in disarming the injured 
of the most powerful passion of corrupt human nature, revenge^ 
and in transforming the fury of malediction into the transports of 
filial and believing prayer ; that Vv^e may remember its value, when 
we combine with Stephen's dying petitions, the subsequent con- 
version and labours of Paul. There the decisive superiority of the 
religion of Jesus was irrefragably certified ; as it imparts to its pos- 
sessors a tranquillity which injustice cannot interrupt and which 
an unexpected and merciless death cannot diminish. 

Who can hear a Martyr expressing his contempt for "all that 
earth calls good and great," contrasted with the approbation of 
the Redeemer, the Son of Man "Avho shall judge the world in 
righteousness," and not feel the incapacity of things terrestial to 
satisfy the desires of the immortal soul ; and their insignificant 
value, when compared with that "good hope through grace," 
which terror could not shake, and which the "midst of the burn- 
ing fiery furnace" could not consume ? Who can listen to an 
outcast from earth, proclaiming the conquests of redemption, and 
"the unsearchable riches of Christ," to the obdurate sinners who 
have unjustly exposed him on the cross, as food for birds of prey, 
and not admire the impress of a gracious Savior's hand ? Who 
can stand around the stake to which are chained the despised dis- 
ciples of Jesus of Nazareth, view the flames which destroy their 
tortured limbs, and hear the warblings of their dying hallelujahs, 
without corresponding emotions in his soul ? On such scenes, we 
may gaze with confticting sensations of rapture, until, like the 
disciples travelling to Emmaus, "our hearts burn within us," 
while the Lord from the pages of his servant's history, more lu- 
cidly opens to us the Scriptures. Dead indeed must be the sensi- 
bilities of that man, who can behold those august evidences of 
Christianity without gratitude, when he scrutinizes his own differ- 
ent situation ; and cold must be the feelings of that disciple who 
can pass by like the Priest and the Levite, and enjoy no sacred 
warmth, when he contemplates the chariot of fire, which wafted 
the suffering triumphant believer from death in great tribulation, 
to " see the face of God and the Lamb, and live and reign with 
Christ in the holy city, New Jerusalem. 



20 PREFACE. 

To a Christian of the nineteenth century, and especially to a 
descendant of those Puritans, who for the rights of conscience, 
buffeted the tempest of the almost untraversed Atlantic, and who 
erected their tabernacles where Pontifical despotism has never 
fully displayed its ruthless characteristics ; it is difficult vividly to 
represent the scenes, and to embody in our sensibilities the expe- 
rience of the Redeemer's disciples, during the prevalence of those 
tremendous storms with which persecution formerly desolated the 
church of God. The prominent acts of the Mother of Abomina- 
tions, furnish a hideous exhibition of the state of the world at that 
period; and should excite unfeigned gratitude to God, that we 
have not been intoxicated by her enchantment. We who have 
not actually witnessed the fiery intolerance and grinding oppres- 
sions of the terrestrial Vicegerent of Satan, and his infatuated 
votaries, cannot comprehend that degrading vassalage in which 
the human intellects and sensibilities then were enchained. Al- 
though the retrospective scrutiny of the past produces humiliation 
for the extreme depravity and debasement of our ancestors, yet it 
is conjoined with the anticipations of triumph, that the hell born 
Usurper, "The Man of Sin and the Son of Perdition," ere long 
shall be dislodged from his odious papal throne ; and that he who 
is " exalted Prince and Savior" shall possess his rightful author- 
ity over all the tribes of mankind. Hence, from this investigation 
of the Popedom, we shall derive impressive and beneficial moral 
lessons ; and, therefore, we engage in the review of Romanism, 
invoking the aid and benediction of "the Spirit. of Truth," to 
guide us into all truth, that our labor may not be " in vain in the 
Lord." 



I 



TEXT-BOOK OF POPERY. 



INTRODUCTORY. 

ILLUSTRATION OF THE PREDICTIONS " IN THE SCRIPTURE OF TRUTH," 
RESPECTING THE PRINCIPAL ANTI-CHRISTIAN AP03TACIES. 

The history of the Roman dominions during several centu- 
ries includes the most interesting and instructive features and 
actions of the then existing human family. In their more pro- 
minent qualities, the ecclesiastical portions of that empire, 
whether designated as Greek or Latin, have alv/ays remained 
very similar. Their idolatry, superstition, ignorance, servility 
to their Hierarchs, and their monastic institutions, proclaim 
them, although widely separated through extraneous circum- 
stances, twin children of the same " angel of the bottomless pit," 
whether called Apollyon or the Dragon. 

By the successive triumphs of the first Constantino, the gos- 
pel became the authoritatively established religion in every part 
of the Roman empire. -At that era, the doctrines of the cross in 
general were comparatively pure. But when persecution ceased, 
the spirituality of the Christian was soon lost in a worldly tem- 
per. Devotional fervour evaporated in external forms, and a 
variety of heathenish superstitions was speedily propagated. 
Unhallowed veneration for departed saints and relics, and 
priestly celibacy, eclipsed the lustre, and infected the very es- 
sence of pure and undefiled religion. 

The ministers of the Church, who previous to Constantine's 
accession to unlimited power, with some exceptions of ambition, 
had gradually been losing their parity of rank and influence, 
were now placed at vast distances. With the most selfish and 



22 PREDICTIONS 01 THE 

corrupt pertinacity, each of the prelates of Rome and Constan- 
tinople opposed the other's pretensions to the highest ecclesiasti- 
cal dignity. The inferior clergy ranged themselves mider either 
banner ajid thus originated the controversy which eventually 
divided nominal Christians into the Greek and Latin Churches. 
By the declining power of the Emperors, those two Prelates at- 
tained almost boundless control. Every species of abuse gradu- 
ally increased in niimber, energy, and extent, throughout the 
fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. The simplicity of religious 
worship was irretriisvably banished. The purity of divine 
truth was contaminated with a mixture of devilish inventions, 
which augmented in an accelerated proportion to their protract- 
ed continuance: and the human mind was at last enchained in 
that gloomy and consummate vassalage, from which it has never 
yet been disenthralled. 

At the commencement of that mysterious period, which is em- 
phatically denominated the 1260 years, was exhibited the rise 
of that duplicate alienation from the gospel of Christ, the Mo- 
hammedan Apostacy and the Roman corruptions. Those have 
uniformly been designated as the dark ages, in which ignorance 
and vice maintained a resistless and an almost universal sway. 
Evangelical simplicity, illumination and holiness, were effaced by 
pompous superstitions, with unreserved submission to a Monk's 
directions ; and the utmost licentiousness was sanctioned by an 
ecclesiastical mendicant's plenary absolution. 

After the blast of the fourth trumpet, described by John in the 
Revelation, chapter 8 ; a pause ensued, during which interval, 
the Apostle heard the angel who fled through the midst of 
heaven, denounce the three woes which the inhabitants of the 
earth should experience, " by reason of the other voices of the 
trumpets, which the remaining angels" should afterwards sound. 

The vision, Revelation 9 : 1-li ; delineates the origin and 
success of Mohammedanism. When the trumpet resounded, the 
Prophet saw a star fall from heaven, which held the key of the 
bottomless pit; and having opened it, a dense black smoke 
issued, that darkened the sun and the air. That smoke is most 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 23 

properly interpreted to mean, those confounding and pernicious 
heresies which obscure the pure light of divine revelation. 

In their commencement, the grand features of their domina- 
tion, and in their extirpation, the two apostacies nearly S3m- 
chronize. The star fell from heaven unto earth, precisely at 
the sounding of the fifth trumpet, anterior to the appearance of 
the locusts, and consequently preceded, though almost imper- 
ceptibly, the Mohammedan imposture. "Pure and undefiled 
Religion" had been almost concealed from sight by the autho- 
rized worship of images, saints and angels, prayers for the dead, 
and other Romish inventions ; which subsequent to the close of 
the period allotted to the fourth trumpet, had disfigured the 
countenance and defiled the character of the church. The 
head of those absurdities unlocked the abyss, removed the ob 
stacles from the way of the impostor, and formed the pretext for 
his mission ; and the harmony of the prophetical records with 
reference to the Eastern and Western Apostacies, requires us to 
admit, that not an individual, either as the fallen star, or as the 
King of the locusts, Apollyon was intended ; but that succes- 
sion of men who corrupted the Gospel, and of Caliphs who 
exemplified their legal claim to the title of " the Angel of the 
bottomless pit." 

The accuracy of the vision renders it a condensed history of 
the Mohammedans, during the 150 years which ensued after 
the first public declaration that the Arabian made of his celestial 
appointment. 

Locusts strictly signified the Saracen armies. They origi- 
nated in the same regions. In numbers they were almost incal- 
culable, and they spread desolation through all the Roman em- 
pire. They were enjoined not to devastate the earth, but to 
slay all those " men who had not the seal of God upon their 
foreheads." It is an irresistible demonstration of the certainty 
of the "scripture of truth," that th^ conquests of those scorpion 
locusts principally extended, where the greatest corruptions 
of the Gospel had been admitted. They had no power to kill 
the nations. Though they grievously ravaged mauy parts of 



i^ PREDICTIONS OF THE 

the Greek and Latin churches, they could not exterminate 
them. Before Constantinople they were always repulsed. Rome 
they could not demolish. A locust lives precisely five months ; 
and for the same prophetical duration, were those men permitted 
to torture the nations. Accordingly, from the public declaration 
of Mohammed's delusions, 150 years elapsed, before Bagdad, 
the city of peace, was erected ; then the locusts terminated their 
conquests, and their power gradually declined. The crowns 
denoted their turbans and other badges of majesty, wdth the ex- 
tension of their sway. Their faces exhibited a manly beard, 
while their hair was decorated after the fashion of women. 
Lion teeth prefigured their enraged force. Iron breast-plates 
bespoke their energy in self-defence. Wings lucidly developed 
the fury of their assaults, and the rapidity of their victories. 
Their scorpion-stings diffused the Impostor's poison, which 
generated more injury to the souls, than their barbarities inflict- 
ed misery upon the bodies of men. The title of their king was 
peculiarly emphatic and applicable ; Abaddon, the destroyer — 
for they murdered man in his enjoyments, in his hopes and in 
his doom. 

*' One wo is past ; and behold there come two woes more 
hereafter ; a long period intervened between the issuing of the 
Arabian locusts and the loosing of the Euphratean horsemen." 
Rev. 9: 13—21. 

That prediction was luminously displayed in the history 
of the Turks. In numbers immense, and with irresistible force, 
the Scythians had migrated westerly, until their progress was 
arrested on the borders of the Euphrates. There possessing 
several parts of the Saracenic conquests, they remained bound in 
four distinct sovereignties, through the instrumentality of the 
European crusades. But when the rage for those Quixotic ex- 
peditions ceased, and the temporary dominion which the Latins 
obtained in Palestine was nearly extinguished; the trumpet 
sounded ; the four angels were loosed, and the successes of the 
Turks over the Eastern empire commenced. 
i4,The angels and their horsemen from the river Euphrates 



1 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 5i6 

were prepared for a year, and a month, and a day, and an hour, 
or 395 years and 15 days ; and it is indubitable, that from their 
first victory over the Eastern empire, until their final conquest 
in Poland, that space of time was precisely exhausted. 

Their numbers almost surpass credibility, and they were ca- 
valry. Enveloped in scarlet, blue and yellow, they appeared 
as covered with fire, jacinth and brimstone ; and their horses 
were peculiarly strong and fierce. Their fire and brimstone 
destroyed the bodies ; and their venomous stings, the souls of 
men. Ferocity was their distinctive character. Similar to the 
scorpion-locusts, those serpent-horsemen were armed with world- 
ly ambition and Mohammedan fanaticism. The banishment of 
the gospel, with the substitution of the Koran, universally ac- 
companied the successes both of the Saracens and the Turks. 

The close of the vision depicts the Latin church during the 
progress of the Angels who were loosed. Many countries in 
Europe were not affected by the Saracenic Locusts or the Eu- 
phratean horsemen ; but they persisted in the worship of devils, 
saints, and images ; in their persecutions, inquisitions and mur- 
ders ; in their detestable licentiousness, the pretended celibacy 
of the clergy, monks and nuns ; and in their fraudulent exactions, 
by which the nations were impoverished. 

That prophetic delineation refers to the desolation of the 
Eastern part of the Roman Empire; and it is a wondrous con- 
firmation of our faith in the divinity of the Christian system, that 
the events should so accurately have coalesced with the predic 
tion. 

The progress of that curse over the earth was equally rapid. 
extensive and direful. Froin the Mohammedan era, the Hegira 
in 622, must probably be dated the commencement of the 1260 
years in reference to the Eastern Church ; hence the total extir- 
pation of that system will probably occur prior to the end of this 
century. 

By the force of arms and the splendor of victory, the nations 
were obliged or intimidated to submit to the Caliphs. The 
cruel dissensions among the Nestorians, the Greeks, and the 



^6 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

Other sects, were accompanied with such abhorrent outrages, 
that the very name of Christianity became odious. At that period 
also, all the Eastern countries, and even the major part of the 
Roman empire, were overwhelmed in the most profound igno- 
rance, and of course were easily deluded by an artful and bold 
teacher, decorated with the garb of an irresistible conqueror. 
But the grand reason was this ; its complete and cunning adap- 
tation to the depravity of the human heart. He selected some of 
the fundamental truths which both Jews and Christians believed 
-—he required of his disciples but few duties, neither difficult to 
be performed nor involving any restraint upon their corrupt pas- 
sions ; and thus by sanctifying their preconceived opinions, by 
admitting ail their usual customs, and by indulging all the vices 
to which they were naturally addicted, he successfully triumph- 
ed over the illumination and holiness of Christianity. 

The delusions of the Impostor of Mecca still comprehend 
within their sway, all the Eastern Roman empire, with the par- 
tial exception of the scattered Greek Church, Arabia, Persia, a 
considerable part of India, China, Tartary, Egypt, and the 
whole northern part of Africa, except where a few nominal 
Christians of Abyssinia yet perpetuate some remembrance of 
the ancient faith and glories of redemption by the Lamb who was 
slain. 

The demolition of that apostacy seems to be predicted as im- 
mediately anterior to the extinction of the Papal superstition. 
As they were not very distantly separated in their original es- 
tablishment, so the destruction of the former will be followed at 
ao long interval by the other's extermination. 

The history of the nominal Church in those countries where 
the " Angel of the bottomless pit," Abaddon or Apollyon has 
during so many centuries been permitted to tyrannize, may be 
lucidly and summarily comprehended in four words, supersti- 
tion, ig7iorance, discord and depravity. 

From the period which elapsed from the establishm.ent of Mo- 
hammedism in the seventh century, until the capture of Constan- 
tinople by the Turks in 1453, the Christians were nominal 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 2T 

possessors of the ancient authority which the successors of Con- 
stantine enjoyed and bequeathed ; but from the period when the 
Prelate of Rome was elevated to the dignity of supreme Pontiff, 
in the Avest ; the power of the Emperor was little recognized 
and less obeyed. The progress towards idolatrous institutions 
and mental darkness was uniform ; and the increase of those 
evils was accelerated by the contentions that successively arose 
among the adherents of the two rival hierarchies, Rome and 
Constantinople. 

Notwithstanding those formidable barriers to the extension 
of *' the truth as it is in Jesus ;" during several centuries, diversi- 
fied attempts were made by the Nestorians especially, which 
were partially successful, to amplify the knowledge of the 
Christian religion. 

In all the countries generally included in the appellative, In 
dependent Tartary ; the northern boundaries of Syria, Persia, 
India, and even to China ; the influence of that disfigured and 
mutilated Christianity which was then preached, was acknow- 
ledged and perceptible ; and myriads^of persons, professing, and 
with all their imperfections, many of them sincerely believing 
and experiencing the power of Redeeming grace, then existed 
in those realms, which now appear ingulphed in the tangible 
darkness produced by the Arabian Apollyon^s smoke of the bot- 
tomless pit. 

The general condition of those who adhered to " the glorious 
gospel of the ever Blessed God," at no period of those eight 
centuries was scarcely tolerable ; and often were they involved 
in very appalling miseries. 

Immediately after the martial successes of Mohammed and 
the earliest Caliphs had obtained for them peaceable possession of 
the countries bordering upon Arabia ; their astonishing intre- 
pidity and infuriated fanaticism, which had been previously 
engrossed in extending their military conquests, not having any 
external object for their continual ebullition, they began to exhi- 
bit their malignity, in the oppression of the Christians whom 
they had vanquished and subdued. In their primary exercise 



fS PREDICTIONS OF THE 

of government they had been moderate and indulgent ; but their 
lenient dominion was gradually transformed into vexatious seve- 
rity. The Nazarenes vt^ere oppressed with tributes so heavy, 
that they were almost equivalent to a general confiscation of 
their property, and their rights as freemen were exchanged for 
the degradation of galling vassalage. This wretchedness was 
augmented through every succeeding generation. 

That unnatural combination, an Anti-christian tyranny and a 
Christian people, could not long subsist. In the revolution 
of a century, that they might live in this world in peace, vast 
numbers of those who professed Christianity conformed to the 
apostacy of their despots ; and they, whose evangelical mag- 
nanimity resisted all the deceptions of their tempters, were so 
constantly and bitterly persecuted and debased, that nothing of 
Christianity remained, but the name, and a few insipid ceremo- 
nial institutions. 

From that period until the capture of Constantinople by the 
Turks, the history of the Christian disciples narrates only their 
accumulated tortures. The severity of the Mohammedan victors 
increased in proportion to their triumphs in war ; until their 
continual exactions of the wealth of the conquered — their demo- 
lition of the houses of prayer — their obstructions to the influ- 
ence of gospel intelligence — and their ceaseless murders of all 
the men of wisdom, fortitude, and exemplary piety ; having be- 
reft the remnant of the church of its terrestrial pillars — enve- 
loped all that was called Christian, in one mingled mass of ig- 
norance, incivilization and ruin ; in which devastation they still 
continue overwhelmed. 

I. Their Superstiiimis. The illumination of gospel truth, 
and the purity of religious worship, are inseparable. Of the 
absurdity, equally with the extent and aggravation of the super- 
stitious rites which had been introduced into the church, prior 
to the seventh century, the following extract from the life of 
Eligius a very famous Popish saint, furnishes ample evidence. 
It was the general character of the Prelates of that period who 
desired popularity or wealth, most pompously to promulge that 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN AP0STACIE3. 29 

tliey were supernaturally inspired to discover the relics of the 
martyrs. The state of piety among those Christians we can there- 
fore correctly estimate. Dacherius thus declares his eulogy: 
*' To that most holy man, God also granted among other mira- 
cles of his virtues, that through his researches, the bodies of the 
martyrs, which during so many ages had been concealed, by 
his ardor of faith, should be produced and displayed.'' To dis- 
lodge the bones of the dead from their dormitories, was the most 
dignified and fhe noblest employment of a Christian minister ; 
and to worship them when inclosed in gold and silver caskets, 
was the proudest boast and the highest devotion of the avowed 
disciples of the Son of God. 

An immense traffic was carried on in old bones, skulls, teeth 
and nails ; and for the celebration of the honors due to their 
supposititious original owner, particular days, festivals, forms 
and ceremonies were appointed, so that each object might retain 
its peculiar and appropriate ritual. 

That detestable degradation of the human mind, and that ab- 
horrent perversion of all Christian institutions, progressively 
augmented until it swallowed up the nominal church, in the 
vortex of pompous idolatry. Genuine religion, learning and 
devotion having all nearly expired, an ostentatious ceremonial 
was substituted. To invent a fresh ceremony — to change the 
music — to superadd a new mode of venerating the pictures, 
images, statues, or relics of the saints — to discover a novel ex- 
hibition of magnificent frippery, in embellishing the robes of 
the saints, or the garments of the sacerdotal order — and to direct 
the postures, looks and movements of those who conducted their 
superstitions, were considered the highest attainments of human 
ambition, and the most effectual modes to obtain renown. 

Hence the essence of pure and undefiled religion was lost. 
Exterior splendor usurped the place of spiritual-mindedness. 
The indulgence of an unbridled imagination, and the captivation 
of the bewildered senses, constituted the sole object of all reli- 
gious observances ; until Christianity was totally obscured in its 
authority, principles, spirituality and enjoyments. 

8* 



39 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

II. Their Ignorance. To that period may be referred the 
diminution of those efforts to cultivate the various sciences 
which eventually transformed the Christian world into lands 
sitting *' in darkness, and the shadow of death/' The doctrines 
of the gospel were enshrouded by clouds of impervious igno- 
rance. Instead of that spiritual -worship which the truth re- 
quires, the teachers of that age, "the blind leading the blind," 
substituted the imploration to saints, and the adoration of their 
images. The atonement of Christ was banished for the expia- 
tions of a future purgatory. The fundamental article, jusiifica- 
Hon by faithj was excluded; and in its stead was proclaimed the 
efficacy of vain ceremonies to obtain salvation. The necessary 
influences of the Spirit of all grace, to begin and perpetuate the 
life of God in the soul, were discarded for the belief, that the 
rilest relics of corruption could heal all corporeal maladies, and 
eradicate every disorder of the understanding, the affections, and 
the heart. Thus, the clearest light was metamorphosed into the 
most profound obscurity. 

The fundamental doctrines of Christianity seem to have been 
nominally held. But the efficacy of divine truth was impeded 
by the doctrine of the merits and intercession of the saints. The 
growing attachment to the ceaseless and augmenting ceremonial 
of the puerile pomp and silly splendor which attended the 
image worship that was substituted for the magnificence of Bac- 
chanalian Pantheistic idolatry, finally enveloped every part of 
the Christian world in a total torpor ; until the very highest dig- 
nitaries of the church were utterly unable to read or write ; and 
used to append the cross to public records, to verify their signa- 
ture and approbation. Such was the origin of the modern 
marks still made to certify acts, when the parties cannot person- 
ally subscribe their own names. 

An investigation of the annals of Popery verifies the very 
impressive fact — that there is an indissoluble connection between 
the predominance and progress of the gospel of Christ, and the 
existence of all other useful and beneficial knowledge. * It was 
speedily ascertained by the ecclesiastical tyrants of the seventh 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 31 

and eighth centuries, that their usurpations could not be main- 
tained among an enlightened people. Hence all their energies 
were directed to debase the minds of mankind with besotted 
superstition. The Anti-christian Priests despoiled their devo- 
tees of the Holy Scriptures ; and performed all their idolatrous 
ceremonies in an unknown language. Then to suppress all 
illumination, they denounced every writer, and all the books 
which exposed their artifices, and which might have instructed 
their blinded vassals. To which was added a determinate sys- 
tematic persecution, which equally extirpated justice and human- 
ity ; and which in its operation chiefly extinguished the wisest 
and holiest Christians. 

The exclusion of evangelical truth was accompanied by the 
extinction of all the arts and sciences, domestic and personal 
comfort, social security, and national improvement. In those 
respects only, and without adverting to the universal impiety and 
ir religion which overspread all the people who submitted to the 
Apostate chiefs, it seems that Divine Providence has placed 
before us in imperishable lineaments, a convincing exhibition of 
the direful calamities which are in&eparable from Popery. 

The Roman hierarchy are ruthless enemies to all learning. 
Literature never has flourished, and cannot possibly prosper, 
w^here the ungodly domination of the Beast is admitted. That 
fact has been attested by the unvarying and universal history of 
the Papal dominions during the last twelve hundred years. It 
is now equally true, as in the death-like stupor and the black- 
ness of darkness of the seven centuries prior to the Reformation. 
On the contrary, not only Scriptural devotioh and holiness have 
emanated from the resuscitation of the Scriptures out of the 
cloistered sep-ulchre, but all the modern scientific inventions, and 
the various mechanical improvements in every department, 
which are gradually transforming the character^ relations, and 
condition of mankind, are the effect of that impetus alone, which 
has been given to society by the exciting and expansive energy 
of the gospel of Christ. 

Popery is the deadly foe of all mental illumination, and the 



32 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

destroyer of all terrestrial enjoyments, mortal advantages, and 
religious duty and hope. If therefore, no other allegation 
could be made against it, but that it is unchangeably inimical 
to all those advancements in wisdom and virtue which are es- 
sential to human peace ; that alone is amply sufficient to induce 
all philanthropists to unite their efforts for its overthrow, that 
it may be banished amid universal execration. At the same 
time it cannot be too often reiterated, and too deeply impressed 
upon the consciences and hearts of Christians, and the memory 
of all good citizens, that to the promulgation of the gospel by the 
Protestant churches are we indebted for all our boasted supe- 
riority among the nations; and that every acquisition which 
either benefits or adorns man in his complex relations, is en- 
joyed in exact proportion to the energy with which Protestant- 
ism is sustained, and to the extent where its heavenly principles 
are promulged. 

III. Their discord. Three topics were sources of permanent 
contention, two of which finally severed the nominal Christians 
into Greeks arid Latins. 

The election of Photius as Bishop of Constantinople, involved 
the adherents of the Roman and Greek Patriarchs in general 
confusion. A catalogue of charges, combining doctrinal and 
practical corruption, was promulged against the Italian Pontiff^ 
which only tended to prolong and strengthen the distraction. 

The contest concerning the manner in which the body and 
blood of Christ are present in the Eucharist is especially dis- 
tinguishable' for its consequences. A variety of opinions had 
been held upon that topic, without any person's having pretend- 
ed to decide authoritativel}?- and with' precision. About the 
middle of the ninth century, one of that pestiferous generation of 
vipers, the Monks, published a discussion upon the body and 
blood of Christ. That son of ignorance maintained, that after 
the consecration of the bread and wine by the Priest, their sub- 
stantial qualities were removed; their figui^ only remaining, 
which contained truly and locally present, the same body of our 
Lord that was crucified and raised from the dead. 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 33 

Against that most astonishing and palpable absurdity, John 
Scotus alone argued for the truth ; by demonstrating, that the 
Sacramental elements are symbols only of the invisible Re- 
deemer. The heretical positions thus affirmed by the Ronush 
Friar were discovered however to be very advantageous to 
the superstitious despotism; and amid the increasing gloom, 
they continued to charm the votaries of idolatry, until they were 
eventually proclaimed as infallible axioms by the Papal Tran- 
substantiation. 

But the most violent of all the contentions was the subject of 
image-worship. The Pope having by the most nefarious means 
usurped considerable temporal authority, resolved to defend his 
deteriorations of the gospel, the profitable trade of shrine-mak- 
mg, and the devotions to the dead and their statues. Against 
those corruptions, in 727, Leo, the Greek Emperor, openly pro- 
tested. In the porch of his palace at Constantinople, had been 
erected an image of Jesus on the cross. As it was an incentive 
to idolatry, Leo directed that it should be removed. The per- 
son employed to destroy it was murdered by the devotees of the 
unhallowed similitude, and they who were punished for the 
slaughter of the officer are to this day honoured by the Greeks 
as martyrs ! That event produced a rupture between the Em- 
peror and the Pope. Leo refused all communion with Gre- 
gory; and the latter excommunicated all the condemners of 
images. 

During fifty years, all the countries where Christianity nomi- 
nally governed were in discord. It was a vigorous conflict be- 
tween the devout worshippers of one God, and the blind par- 
tisans of open idolatry. One of the councils thus decided — 
*' Our Saviour hath delivered us from idolatry, and hath taught 
us to adore him in spirit and in truth. But the devil hath in- 
sensibly brought back idolatry under the appearance of Christi- 
anity, persuading men to worship the creature, and to take for 
God a stone or block, to which they give the name of Jesus 
Christ." Another council authorized that worship of the work 
of men's hands ; and notwithstanding all the imperial authority 



S4 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

both of the Greek and German Sovereigns, so influential was 
th« prevalence of superstition, and so commanding the dignity, 
arrogance, and pretensions to ecclesiastical superiority and vene- 
ration of the Italian Pontiff, that although another very nume- 
rous council expressed their abhorrence of that derogation of 
the Divine supremacy ; it extended its course, until every spe- . 
cies of that besotted adoration of idols triumphed over all oppo- 
sition, and became commensurate with the civil boundaries of 
the Church's terrestrial domain. With the exception of those 
countries purified by the Protestant Reformation, the lapse of 
a thousand years has neither changed its character, nor dimin- 
ished its folly and corruption. 

From those doctrinal, devotional, and practical disputations 
combined, and the boundless ambition of the Roman pontiff, 
with the impetuous resistance of the Patriarch of Constantino- 
ple, proceeded the schism between the eastern and western por- 
tions of the nominal Church. Equally immersed in darkness, 
alike inflammatory in turbulence, unrestrained by evangelic 
principle, and pursuing nothing but their individual aggran- 
dizement, all attempts to harm.onize such repulsive materials 
as those ambitious conflicting Lords of God's heritage, were in 
vain. Indeed, it is preferable for the world, that the Lord per- 
mitted those arrogant Pontiffs and their stupid adherents to exist 
in separation ; as by that means, some little fervour and a few 
partial gleams of light occasionally warmed and illumed the 
moral hemisphere. 

IV. Their depravity. All the flood-gates of iniquity were 
opened, and every moral restraint was completely extirpated. 
The holy comm.ands of Christianity were no longer enforced. 
The favour of God was understood to be a privilege which could 
be obtained only by money paid to the Church officers. Every 
crime however enormous was expiated by the offender, if he 
could only offer to the Pope, or to the Priest who absolved him, a 
sum equivalent to his insatiable cupidity. Pontiffs and Patriarchs, 
through every intermediate grade of Ecclesiastics to the bell- 
ringer, with friars, monks and nuns, wallowed in all the impiety 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 35 

of Atheistic principle, and in all the corruption of bestial licen- 
tiousness. Auricular confession, the obligation imposed upon 
every individual above puberty, frequently to unfold to the 
priest all the secrets of their hearts, and all the actions of their 
lives, placed the reputation, the safety, the wealth, and the moral 
existence of all persons, at the option of that confidential adviser ; 
and thus unhesitatingly elevated him into that superiority, 
which precluded all opposition to his commands, and which 
enforced full compliance with his wishes. Hence, he had no 
restraint for indulgence, but satiety : and the most artful of all 
the manoeuvres connected with that ungodly machination was 
this, that it embodied around him a constant guard for his de- 
fence. They not only participated in his criminality, but were 
coerced to silence, by the dread of their o^vn secrets being pub- 
licly divulged. From the constant and increasing operation ot 
those varied evils, the world became at last one almost un- 
mingled mass of utter loathsomeness. Having grasped the 
larger proportion of the wealth of society to feed their voluptu- 
ousness ; and having banished all virtue, that conscience might 
not effectually interpose, and induce their degraded adherents 
to resist their despotic and vitiating authority; the ecclesiastical 
orders, by their precept, example, connivance, commutation ol 
sin, and their diminution of the sanctity and supremacy of the 
Divine law, involved all persons within their ghostly rule, in a 
moral disorder apparently incurable, and in almost irremediable 
destruction. Yet some difference is perceptible between the Ro- 
mans and the Greeks. The devotees of the Latin Usurper were 
more ignorant, vicious and shameless, than the ,Eastern dis- 
ciples. Nevertheless, the record is so painfully disgusting even 
of the best of the monkish orders and of the hierarchical atten- 
dants, that the prophetical delineation. Revelation 9 : 20, 21, is 
lamentably verified by all the accuracy of historical facts; 
which corroborate the statement, that their depravity multiplied 
in energy, extent and diversity, during the seven centuries 
which elapsed, until the third angel, the Reformers of the six- 
teenth century, with a loud voice, Revelation 14 : 9 — 11, re- 



k 



36 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

sounded that dread denunciation, and reverberated tliat won- 
drous blast; which has silenced the groans of purgatory, 
stemnied the tide of idolatrous worship, rendered monkish vitio- 
sity loathsome, and promulged the triumphs of redemption 
throughout the civilized world. 

But as to "the Man of Sin and the Motoer of Harlots," are 
devoted nearly all the Divine predictions recorded in the Apo- 
calypse, a succinct examination of the sacred record and of the 
Papal annals, is indispensable ; especially w^hen we remember 
the strong connection which exists between the ancient Popish 
institutions and our modern customs and observances ; and also, 
that many of the Scriptural prophecies already have most ex- 
actly been accomplished, 

" There appeared a great wonder in heaven ; a Woman 
clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and upon her 
head a crown of twelve stars." Revelation 12. The Christian 
Church, shining in the splendor of the Sun of Righteousness, 
superior to the Mosaic dispensation, transported above sublunary 
enjoyments, and decorated with Apostolic doctrines. During 
the period of her travail from the day of Pentecost until the de- 
molition by Constantino, *' a great red dragon with seven heads 
and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads, who drew the 
third part of the stars of heaven and cast them unto the earth," 
stood ready to devour the woman's child, the avowed and con- 
sistent believers in Jesus, the Son of God. That the seven 
crowns were upon his heads, and not ten crowns upon his 
horns, evinces, that the Roman imperial government, not the 
kings of the European nations, was intended ; and denotes the 
situation of the church under Pagan Rome. But previous to 
the deliverance of the Christians from persecution by Constan- 
tino, the war of Michael and the Dragon interposed ; which 
signifies the vehement exertions that the Pagans, by diabolical 
instigation, made against the establishment of Christianity. 
The Devil after a contest of nearly 300 years was finally over- 
thrown ; for the blood of Christ and the doctrines of the cross, 
by the testimony of them " who loved not their own lives unto 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. S7 

the death,'' vanquished every hellish machination, and the 
heavens rejoiced. 

When the dragon was cast unto the Qarth, he persecuted the 
woman, the Church. That vision designates the continual at- 
tempts which were formed and executed, after the age of Con- 
stantine, to subvert the gospel, and to restore the ancient irreli- 
gion. During those occurrences, the woman received wings, 
by which, at the appointed time, she might fly inta the wilder- 
ness during the 1260 years. The serpent then endeavored to 
destroy her by a flood of water ] meaning the irruptions of the 
Northern Barbarians ; which the surviving Pagans steadfastly 
and strenuously encouraged, hoping that Messiah's religion 
would perish in the commotions. Nevertheless, "the earth 
helped the woman and swallowed up the flood;" for the various 
nations which desolated the Roman empire became nominal 
Christians. Thus discomfited, the dragon in his wrath went 
to "make war with the remnant of her seed," those who submit- 
ted not to the absurdities, superstitions, and pollutions of Popery, 
and "who keep the commandments of God, and the testimony 
of Jesus Christ." 

The beast with seven heads ? ^ ten horns, next appeared 
with crowns on his horns ; and the alteration from the seven 
crowns on his heads to the ten crowns on his horns, declares 
the change which resulted from the extirpation of the imperial 
authority. 

The ten horns are all the present kingdoms of Europe ; 
Russia, Scandinavia, probably Poland, Holland, and Greece 
only excepted. From their origin to the present day, the west- 
ern part of the Roman empire, notwithstanding numberless 
tumults, vicissitudes, and revolutions, has generally remained, 
when in a settled condition, in ten distinct independent sovereign- 
ties. That fact decisively intimates, that whatever modifications 
or external characteristics they may yet exhibit, they shall con- 
tinue in number ten, and are the horns which eventually shall 
£ill with the beast. 

The beast was a leopard for fierceness, a bear in cruelty, and 

4 



Wm PREDICTIONS or THE 

as a lion terrific. The sixth head was wounded in the over- 
throw of the imperial powder ; but it was revived in Charle- 
magne, who established the anti-christian Roman empire ; and 
by the association of the secular authority with the Papal spiri- 
tual supremacy, the nations were all reduced to submission, and 
worshipped the beast, supposing his power to be irresistible. 
Daniel and John agree, that he should speak great things; he 
claimed to be God of gods, and God upon earth, and the duration 
of his authority was fixed for 1260 years. The Papal community 
have blasphemed God, his name, and his tabernacle, by substitu- 
ting image worship in the house of prayer, and by murdering his 
saints, as heretics ; and " them that dwell in heaven," by the 
imputation of the most ridiculous actions, and by sacrilegious 
devotion. He was to make war with the saints and to over- 
come them. All computation fails to ascertain the numbers of 
those who, for denying the Papal dominion and doctrines, have 
been mercilessly tortured by that savage unrelenting beast. His 
power extended over all countries, tongues, and nations, and 
*' all those whose names are not written in the book of life of 
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, worship him." 

Before that horn, three of the ten horns were to fall. Accord- 
ingly, previous to the elevation of the Pope to temporal author- 
ity, through the sanction which the impious Pontiff of Rome 
gave to the usurpations of the sanguinary Phocas, he became 
master of the Gothic kingdom, which had been primarily esta- 
blished in Rome and its vicinity. 

Another beast arose, which had " two horns, like a lamb, but 
speaking as a dragon." That monster seems to personify the 
two bodies of ecclesiastics, who, in all generations, have been the 
principal support of the Pope's devilish sorceries : for they have 
exercised the consummate power of the first beast, spread them- 
selves into every country, subjected by their arts and menaces 
all people, and forced them to adore the "son of perdition." 
Daniers little horn and the two-horned beast are similarly de- 
scribed. " He doth great wonders ;" the pretended miracles of 
the apostates : " he maketh fire come down from heaven upon 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. Wfi 

earth in the sight of men," the bulls and excommunicalions 
which regularly issued from the Vatican against all those 
who dared to oppose the authority of '*him, whose coming is 
after the working of Satan." By those simulated wonders, 
men were deceived. He was to " make an image to the first 
beast." This image is either the Pope, to whom the cardinals 
gave life and ability to speak, who, as a temporal prince, repre- 
sents the ancient Emperors, and, as the infallible head of the 
Church, is the great Papistical idol, and in both respects is 
now the chief of the whole anti-christian tyranny ; or it may- 
include the impious abominations which their chimerical devo- 
tions so ostentatiously display. '* Those who will not worship 
the image of the beast, he was not himself to kill, but cause to 
be killed." The Papal priests never absolutely destroyed their 
opponents, but delivered the witnesses for Jesus to the magis- 
trate, who was coUeagued with them, and completely under their 
dominion, that they might be murdered by the secular arm ; so 
that the ecclesiastical beast was the judge, and kings, with other 
civil authorities, the executioners. "All men were marked 
in their right hand and their foreheads ; and no man might buy 
or sell, save he who had the mark," or his name, or the num- 
ber of the name of the beast. They must bow to the Roman 
idolatries and superstitions, receive "the mark of the beast." 
which is the cross, the cause of the most infernal cruelties and 
the most childish superstitions, and which is^ without cessation 
applied by every ridiculous votary to his hand, intimating his 
activity in supporting the throne of iniquity ; and to his fore- 
head, which avowed his subjection to that tyrannical compound 
of unholy power. All intercourse with the enemies of the Pope 
and his clergy was strictly prohibited. The beast's name is 
specified, 666. It is the name of the first beast, of the ten- 
horned beast, of a man, the name with the mark, and of every 
individual in the empire. All those properties combined meet 
only in the several titles which are used in the Hebrew, Greek, 
and Latin languages, to designate the Popedom ; and conse- 
quently fix it upon that apostacy. 



W PREDICTIONS OF THE 

The Apostle depicts the character of those, who in all ages 
should oppose the Papal authority and supremacy, and *' follow 
the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." Three angels then arise in 
succession ; one flies in the midst of heaven with the everlasting 
gospel ; the early Waldenses and Albigenses. The second 
angel followed, crying, "Babylon is fallen ;'' the Bohemians and 
others, who after the former witnesses were nearh^ or totally 
slain, more plainly and boldly proclaimed the wrath of God 
against the persecutors of the saints. The third angel thun- 
dered with increased vehemence, and with augmented wo in 
his denunciations; Luther, Zuinglius, Calvin, Cranmer, and 
Knox, with their coadjutors and successors, who shall not 
cease to protest against the infernally erroneous principles and 
practices of the Latin hierarchy, until the last witness is mur- 
dered for the sake of Jesus Christ. 

Living nearer the time of the Apostle, the prophecy could not 
be so lucidly expounded ; yet the Waldenses and Albigenses 
more mildly, but with equal resolution, promulged evangelical 
truth. When " the mystery of iniquity" had arrived at its acme, 
and the character of the " Man of Sin" was more clearly deve- 
loped, the prediction was used with more certainty ; and the op- 
position of the Bohemians, the Vaudoisand Wiclif, with Huss and 
Jerome, was marked by a more decided abhorrence. But the 
modern Protestants have been more determined and urgent in 
their importunity, more distinct in their application of those pre- 
dictions to the Papacy, and more severe in the judgments 
w^hich they have denounced. 

After the testimony of the Reformers, the Apostle called the 
disciples to " patience to keep the commandments of God and the 
faith of Jesus ;" and encouraged them to persevere by the assu- 
rance, that " Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord." 

A cloud impenetrable overshades the precise epocha when 
the 1260 years commenced. Prophecy evinces, that the Mo- 
hammedan apostacy will close before Popery shall expire, 
though their decease w^ill be in swifi progression ; and that the 
end of their duration is not immediately to be anticipated. 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN AFOSTACIES. 41 

Speedily after the dominion of "the Man of Sin" commenced, the 
witnesses began to exist ; but the Pope's primitive antagonists 
were the first angel, the Waldenses ; who arose about the year 
666, when the Papal supremacy was generally acknowledged. 
Some of the horns long resisted the power which he claimed; 
but by secession from the Latin apostacy, the primary witnesses 
directly opposed her errors and growing enormities. 

Ample evidence exists, that nearly at the same period when 
the Beast began to reign, the witnesses in sackcloth commenced 
their prophesying in opposition. 

In the eighth century, the Greeks dissented from the Latins; 
and the principal topics which constituted the basis of contest 
between the Papal hierarchy and the followers of the Lamb, 
"as many as would not worship the image of the beast," may 
thus concisely be delineated. 

The Worship of hnages. In the eighth century, the Greek 
Emperors most energetically opposed the devotions offered be- 
fore the statues, the intercession of the saints, and the supposi- 
titious sanctity of the relics. A succession of witnesses constantly 
protested against that derogation from the Divine m.ajesty and 
honor. 

The Supremacy of the Pope excited severe contests ; and it 
seems never to have been universally tolerated throughout the 
ten horns of the beast, until Gregory, whose name, Hildebrand, 
was most appropriately transformed by the sincere Christians 
into Hell-brand, claimed, exercised, and by every species of ty- 
rannical violence finally usurped and obtained, either a volun- 
tary or a tacit subjection to his illimitable authority. 

Transuhstantiation, the most absurd of all palpable and sen- 
sible contradictions, for a long time received every variety of 
resistance ; but ignorance finally triumphed. The canon of the 
mass transformed the wafer into the identical flesh and blood of 
the Redeemer of mankind. 

Penance and Purgatory were the genuine offsprmg of su- 
perstition and blindness. Submission to a monk's prescribed 
mortifications opened the joad to invisible tortures and expia- 
4* 



4t PREDICTIONS OF THE. 

tory sufferings, of which the Pope held the key, and which his 
inferior delegates were authorized to turn, that departed souls 
might be transmitted to heaven. That most detestable and 
gainful of all traffics, in its progressive influence, impoverished 
the nations by draining their wealth, and stultified the people by 
covering them with a thick darkness, impervious, gross and 
tangible as that of Egypt. 

Celibacy, The unnatural system of immuring all the flower 
of the human family in convents and nunneries, however odious 
and abhorrent, is so essential and indispensable a portion of the 
Romish hierarchy, that it cannot exist without its prolongation. 
By the active influence of that anti-social abomination, all the 
ligaments of society were shivered, and the whole Roman em- 
pire was divided into two classes of people ; a band of adherents 
to the Papacy, whose interest it was to support the ghostly des- 
potism, by every artifice and exertion ; and the stupid, debased, 
senseless multitudes, "silly sheep fleeced ten thousand times 
before;" who were continually robbed under a diversity of pre- 
texts when living, and whose property w^as generally grasped 
when dead, that those associated voluptuaries might in indolence 
riot upon the spoils of industry, and with impunity w^allow in 
every species of criminal indulgence. 

In every age, opponents to the Papacy existed. They were 
widely scattered, and variously denominated ; but generally, 
they were called Waldenses, Albigenses, and Leonists. In the 
thirteenth century they had become so numerous, that to crush 
the rebels against him who was seated " in the temple of God, 
as God," the Inquisition w^as established; armed with all the 
power that Jesuitical cunning, Dominican malevolence, interest- 
ed energy, infernal cruelty, Pontifical sanction, and incalculable 
numbers combined, could impart : and in the development and 
in the exercise of their uncontrolled authority, exhibiting all that 
cold-blooded, insensible malignity, at the recollection of which 
barbarism itself is appalled ; and which nothing but Christianity 
could have sustained. 

After the permanent establishment of the Arabian. Imposture, 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 4S 

the mystery of iniquity was completely unfolded, and the 1260 
years of gloom .commenced their revolution. However impos- 
sible it may be, to determine with precision the exact period; 
yet the moral aspect of the nations, the exaltation of the Roman 
hierarchy, the inseparable combination of the ten civil horns of 
the heathen empire, under one nominal judge and legislator, as 
terrestrial vicegerent of God ; and especially the original pro- 
phesying of the two witnesses in sackcloth, authorize the deduc- 
tion, that the sacred mysterious number 666 is probably the true 
date of that duplicate eventful era, in retrospect so humiliating, 
so joyful in anticipation. 

The extent of his dominion. Of graphical prophecy, no 
painting can be more accurate, than the portrait of the Papacy 
drawn by the Apostle, when in Patmos, he " was in the Spirit, 
on the Lord's day." The beast to which "the dragon gave his 
power and his seat, and his great authority," had " seven heads 
and ten horns, and 'upon his horns, ten crowns ;" and in the 
seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse, the heads and the horns 
are explained. *' The seven heads are seven mountains on which 
the woman sitteth;" for the prophet had immediately before de- 
scribed the woman as sitting " upon a scarlet coloured beast, 
having seven heads and ten horns." The seven heads are also 
expounded as seven kings, of whom five had fallen, one existed^ 
"and the other is not yet come;" "and the ten horns are ten 
kings, who have received no kingdom as yet, but receive power, 
have one mind, and shall give their power and strength to the 
beast." 

The seven mountains determine the application of the predic- 
tion to Rome, "the city with seven hills." The seven kings 
imply the several forms of government which successively 
swayed the Roman empire. The Pope's temporal authority is 
that complicated beast, *'that was, and is not, even he is the 
eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition." The scar- 
let coloured beast is the Roman government, in its final attribute. 
That is the Papal hierarchy. 

The great red dragon, which stood before the woman to 



44 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

devour her child as soon as it was born, in the visible or terres- 
trial application of the imagery, is delineated as identical with 
the scarlet coloured beast. To illustrate this point, the deliver- 
ance of the Church from the dragon is fixed at the ordinary- 
period of gestation ; and from the day of Pentecost, until the 
proclamation of Constantino for the universal toleration and en- 
couragement of Christianity, comprised exactly 280 years. But 
why is he clothed in scarlet? The Roman kings, consuls, 
generals, emperors, popes, and cardinals, have continually 
adorned themselves in purple or scarlet robes. This is the cor- 
rect explication of the prediction, as is evident from the remark- 
able manner in which it was adopted by Constantino in his let- 
ter to Eusebius ; *' directing him to repair and rebuild the 
houses for the worship of God." " Liberty being now restored," 
writes the Christian conqueror, "and that dragon!!'^ meaning 
the Pagan imperial government, " that dragon being removed 
from the administration of public affairs, by the providence of 
the great God, and by my ministry ; I esteem the great power 
of God to have been made manifest to all." Eusebius assures 
us, that in express allusion to the Divine Oracles, where the 
evil spirit is called the dragon, a picture of Constantino was ex- 
alted over the gate of his palace, with the cross suspended over 
his head ; and under his feet, *' the great enemy of mankind, 
who persecuted the Church by the means of impious tyrants, in 
the form of a dragon," pierced with a dart in his body, and hurl- 
ed headlong into the watery abyss. 

At the period when Augustulus, the last of the western empe- 
rors, was vanquished, and the imperial sway over the occidental 
part of the Roman empire was destroyed — his dominions were 
divided into ten kingdoms, which comprehended within its ge- 
neral boundary the whole of Europe, except the countries sub- 
sequently possessed by the Turks and the northern regions. 
That remarkable coincidence in the settlement of the countries 
immediately subject to the dragon's beast, is a constant peculia- 
rity^ in the history of the world. " All those kingdoms were 
divided either by conquest or inheritance ; and, as if that ni:un» 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 45 

ber ten had been fatal in the Roman dominions, it has been often 
particularly remarked." Eberard, a papist, mentioned it about 
the year 1240, in the diet of Ratisbon. Luther at the period of 
the Reformation; Newton and Whiston, also 120 years since — 
and that which is yet more astonishing, after the late European 
earthquake, which, at one period, seemed to have transferred 
nearly the whole sovereignty of that continent to an individual 
warrior, the kings of the ancient western empire have " returned 
again to the same condition, and at present it is divided into ten 
principal states." 

If any argument were required to verify our faith in Divine 
revelation, after so perfect a fulfilment of John's prophecy ; it 
might be deduced from the wondrous fact, that 700 years pre- 
vious to the publication of the Apostle's visions, the God oi 
Israel had revealed the same history of the Roman empire to 
Nebuchadnezzar, in the dream which Daniel interpreted ; and 
again, about fifty years subsequent, to the Prophet himself 

Those predictions of the Old Testament were written when 
the Roman power was confined to a small district in Italy, and 
when the name of such a city or people had not crossed the 
Adriatic. The application of those Prophecies was correctly 
made by all the principal ancient expositors of the Sacred Volume. 
Jerom, who lived during the earliest irruptions of the northern 
barbarians, long prior to the complete fulfilment of the propheti- 
cal visions, in one concise and luminous paragraph, detailed the 
whole posterior history of Europe to this day. " The feet and 
toes are partly of iron, and partly of clay, which is most mani- 
festly proved at this time ; and when the Roman empire shall 
be destroyed, there will be ten kings, who will divide it between 
them ; and an eleventh shall arise, a little king, who shall sub- 
due three of the kings, and the other seven shall submit their 
necks to that conqueror." This displays very acute scriptural 
perspicacity ; because if we only change the style from the fu- 
ture for the past, we peruse the utmost exactitude of undeniable 
fact. 

The grand difficulty connected with those delineations con- 



^ PREDICTIONS OF THE 

sists in the utter impossibility to determine the epoch when the 
power of the Beast commenced. That the 1260 years of its du- 
ration have not terminated is evinced, because the angel "having 
great power," has not "come down from heaven, and cried 
mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, 
is fallen." Several eras have been designated as the first of the 
1260 years. *' Their commencement must be placed after the 
subversion of the western empire ; but the beginning of the rise 
and fall of the anti-christian tyranny, and the completion of 
them," may, probably, like the Babylonish captivity, be referred 
to different periods. Justinian, the emperor, in 534, declared the 
Pope the head of all the Churches ; and sent Bishops to Rome 
as his ambassadors. Gregory I. domineered most haughtily 
over all the Churches of the west during the sixth, and the pos- 
terior spiritual usurper, much more despotically in the seventh 
century. The power of the Papacy was remarkably developed 
in the success which attended their efforts to establish the wor- 
ship of images, and the invocation of saints ; for when Gregory 
so blasphemously inserted the name of the Virgin Mary in his 
litanies of devotion, although he was opposed by all the earnest- 
ness of Christian sincerity; by all the illumination of Biblical 
literature ; by the hitherto irresistible influence of primitive prac- 
tice, exemplified in the " Holy Church throughout all the 
world;" by the example of the "noble army of martyrs," and 
by the authority of the Christian imperial government ; yet 
"the Man of Sin" was victorious, and in 606, was proclaimed 
Universal Bishop, Having excommunicated the Greek empe- 
ror in consequence of his opposition to idolatry, and having 
excited such civil commotion and intestine wars, that the sove- 
reignty of Leo was totally subverted in Italy — about 120 years 
from the almost general acknowledgment of his ecclesiastical 
reign, Gregory II., then Pope, usurped the temporal supre- 
macy. In the meantime, the two Apocalyptic witnesses, or the 
heretics, for all who dissented from the beast were so denounced, 
were by the laws declared infamous, and outlaws. The Pope's 
canons were of equal or superior authority to legislative enact- 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 47 

inents, and the be&st had fully received from the dragon "his 
power, and his seat, and great authority." It appears, there- 
fore, to be a reasonable inference, that the year 606 is the ear- 
liest, and the Papal acquisition of the independent civil power, 
about 756, the latest date possible, which can be fixed for the en- 
trance upon the 1260 years. The first is too early; because it 
is prior to the Mohammedan Hegira, and the witnesses prophesy- 
ing in sackcloth : and the latter seems to interpose too great an 
interval between events which prophecy and history both deter- 
mine almost simultaneously to have occurred. The distinct 
ecclesiastical despotism of the Popedom, separated from the civil 
tyranny, probably will be destroyed, before the generally ex- 
tended combination of the apostate Church, and the temporal 
power of the ten horns of the beast, shall for ever be extermi- 
nated. 

The characters of his potcer. Those must first be illustrated 
in the language and painting of prophecy. Daniel represents 
him in his seventh chapter as a horn, the Scriptural symbol of 
energy and force, *' plucking up by the roots three of the first 
horns," overturning three of the ten states. He shall be diverse 
from the first ; his authority being both ecclesiastical and secu- 
lar. *' In this'horn were eyes like the eyes of man ;" denoting 
his cunning policy and solicitude for his own advancement, 
" He had a mouth speaking great things ;" the Pope filled all 
Europe with his noise, boasting of his supremacy, issuing his 
bulls, and dissolving all the relations of society. *' His look was 
more stout than his fellows;" he claimed and possessed almost 
universal superiority over all the ten kings. " He shall speak 
great words against the Most High ;" the Pope established him- 
self above all law, arrogated the god-like attributes of holiness 
and infallibility, and demanded and enforced obedience to his 
decretals, when they were absurd, destructive, and blasphe- 
mous. *' He shall Avear out the saints of the Most High ;" who 
ever harassed the sincere disciples of the Lamb with more 
cruelty or constancy, by massacre and tortures, than the Popes 
and their inquisitorial agents? ** He shall think to change 



^ PREDICTIONS OF THE 

times and laws;" this was effected by the indulgences for sin, 
the idolatrous festivals which he appointed, the anti -scriptural 
articles of faith and the vitiating practices which he sanctioned, 
and by claiming the indefeasible prerogative to alter and reverse 
at his pleasure the laws of God and man. " They shall be given 
into his hand, until a time, and times, and the dividing of times ;" 
time means a year ; therefore, this is equivalent to three years and 
a half, *' forty-two months, a thousand two hundred and three- 
score days." God declared to Ezekiel, " I have appointed thee 
each day for a year f and Daniel's seventy weeks were 490 
years, consequently these are 1260 years. 

The description of the Apostle Paul is not less accurate — " He 
opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God or 
that is worshipped, so that he as God sitteth in the temple of 
God, showing himself that he is God." In a further delinea* 
tion, he describes the members of the apostacy as giving heed 
*' to seducing spirit and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hy- 
pocrisy, forbidding to marry, abstaining from meats, and having 
their consciences seared with a hot iron." That is the genuine 
picture of the Papal system. The Popes have always de- 
stroyed, if practicable, those who adhered to the word of God 
and rejected their traditions. *' He exalted himself;" emperors 
and kings have been dethroned and restored by them ; and their 
kingdoms have been bestowed as the patrimony of the beast. 
The most dignified potentates of Europe themselves have waited 
at the gates of the Pope's palace, almost naked, in the midst of 
winter. They have prostrated themselves before him, kissed 
his toe, and held his stirrup. Two of them have led his horse 
by the bridle in procession. Their crowns have been kicked 
from their heads by the Pope's foot. He has trampled upon 
their heads ; and they have even suffered their necks to be trod- 
den upon as a footstool, when he ascended his horse, or portable 
canopied throne. This Scripture was impiously used on those 
occasions : — " They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou 
6asn thy foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and 
adder ; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 49 

feel."' Psalm 9 1 : 12, 13. " The word of God has been made of 
none effect by his traditions." The Pope has forbidden the com- 
munion of bread and wine, marriage, the knowledge of the Scrip- 
tures ; while he enforces the violation of the first commandment, 
and has erased the second to remove the Divine barrier to idol- 
atry. He also sanctifies murder. '* He sits in the temple of 
God, as God ;" upon the high altar, at his pontifical inaugura- 
tion. The nominal Lord's table is his footstool, and thus he 
receives god-like adoration. " He shows himself that he is 
God ;" he has blasphemously assumed the inalienable titles and 
attributes, with the incommunicable power and prerogatives, of 
"the only blessed Potentate, the only wise God our Savior," to 
pardon sin, which the Jews declared belonged to God alone ; 
and for which they impeached and hated the Lord of life and 
glory, to whom it belonged; and has also declared that his 
authority is greater than the word of God, and must be received 
on the penalty of " everlasting punishment." Some of his titles 
were these : " Our Lord God the Pope ; God upon earth ; King 
of kings, and Lord of lords; Judge in the place of God." He 
also claimed, " God has delivered to me all the kingdoms, of 
this world. The power of the Pope extends to things celes- 
tial, terrestrial, and infernal. The Pope doth what he pleases, 
even things unlawful, and is more than God. If the Pope com- 
mand vice and forbid virtue, the Church is bound to believe 
that vice is good and virtue wicked, unless she would sin against 
her own conscience. The authority of the Church, that is, the 
Pope, is more ancient and worthy than the Scriptures." 

It is evident, therefore, that Daniel's little horn and Paul's 
man of sin are identical ; and not less the Antichrist of John. 
This interpretation was published 1660 years ago by Justin ; and 
all the most enlightened expositors who wTote prior to theexterm 
nation of the Western imperial power, corroborate his application 
of the prophecy. Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, Cyril, Am- 
brose, Hilary, Jerome, Augustin, Chrysostom, and even Gregory 
I. himself. Pope at the close of the sixth century, declared^ 
that he who assumed the title of Universal Bishop was either 

5 



50 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

Antichrist or his forerunner. Yet, in 606, his almost immediate 
successor, Boniface, two years only subsequent to the death of 
Gregory, usurped the same title thus so boldly denounced by the 
former hierarch. That title, with all its anti-christian appen- 
dages, is still retained by the present Pope, Gregory XVI., the 
genuine heir of all the pride, of all the hatred to the gospel, and 
of all the cruelty, which Hildebrand or Alexander ever felt or 
displayed. The modern " Man of Sin," however, possesses not 
the opportunity to develop his real and perfect character ; but 
he has often asserted the undiminished plenitude of his eccle- 
siastical supremacy ; and has invariably counteracted the spread 
of the Scriptures by his audacious bulls, mandates, and venom, 
against the Bible Societies, and Revealed Truth in the vernacu- 
lar language. 

With the qualities belonging to the Apocalyptic woman, as 
described by John, two other of her characteristics must be 
noticed. Upon her forehead w^as a name written, " Mystery ;" 
and formerly, that word was inscribed in letters of gold in 
front of the Pope's triple crown. " The woman w^as drunken 
with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of 
Jesus." Blasphemy and cruelty were predicted as her prime 
distinctive features. That they were appropriately described 
will most evidently appear, when we narrate the high claims and 
the sanguinary practices of the anti-christian apostacy. It has 
been calculated that the Popes and their vassals have massacred 
ten times as many rejecters of the Papal authority, as the number 
of those, who, under the heathen emperors, were martyred be- 
cause they refused to bow down to their idols. Well, therefore, 
might John wonder, " with great admiration," at the vision of 
the external form and name of the Christian Church, encircled 
with an ocean of blood, which was effused from the veins of Im- 
manuel's disciples, and the Apostle's brethren in the faith. 

The commencement of the seventh century beheld the evolu- 
tion of the Mohammedan Imposture, and the establishment of the 
Papal supremacy. Of the Romish Church during the dark 
ii^es, the following are striking characteristics. The intermi- 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 51 

nable multiplication of the most preposterous rites and cere- 
monies. The accession erf temporal power to the Pope's spirit- 
ual jurisdiction. The chivalric derangement which depopula- 
ted Europe, that the land of Canaan might be rescued from the 
Mohammedans, but which directly produced the fulfilment of 
prophecy respecting the Turks. The increase of celibacy, by 
which the nations were prodigiously weakened, and vice incon- 
ceivably advanced. The absurdities of transubstantiation, which 
egregiously consolidated the power of the Pope. The practice 
of selling indulgences, and pardon for every sin, past, present, 
or future, provided money sufficient were paid for absolution ; by 
which the people were unspeakably robbed, and the Romish 
priesthood proportionably aggrandized. The exaltation of the 
^* Man of Sin" to the uncontrolled government of the nations : 
by disposing of temporal authorities ; by dispensing with the 
obligations of the oath ; by transforming the nature of morality ; 
by substituting the most aggravated crimes for the most august 
virtues ; and by pretending to abolish the everlasting punish- 
ment which God has denounced against the impenitent perpe- 
trators of iniquity. The incessantly malignant persecutions ; for 
Rome Papal has murdered indefinitely more Christians than 
the Pagan persecutors. Through a long succession of ages, the 
Papal ecclesiastics destroyed and became intoxicated with the 
blood of myriads of witnesses, who, in sackcloth, continued to 
prophesy on behalf of their crucified Lord. 

When the nations of Europe appeared to be overwhelmed 
in darkness irremediable, several unexpected events combined 
their influence to dispel the gloom which had so long enveloped 
them. Those crusaders who returned from the Asiatic mili- 
tary expeditions, during their absence, had imbibed a consider-? 
able degree of knowledge, and a rising spirit of independence. 
In Greece, through which the barbarian fanatics passed, the 
arts and sciences, with a measure of literary information supe- 
rior to that which was possessed by the monkish orders within 
the confines of the Latin Church, then subsisted. From the 
taste which they acquired, a vast flood of light emanated from 



Wm PREDICTIONS OF THE 

the Italian poets and artists, and introduced the revival of lite- 
rature. The overthrow of the Constantinopolitan empire ban- 
ished prodigious numbers of the Greek Christians, and scattered 
them throughout the various countries of Europe. The inven- 
tion of printing multiplied books, which before had been confined 
to the monasteries ; and thus rendered every species of knowledge 
easy of acquisition. The discoveries of the Portuguese, and the 
adventurous spirit of Columbus, which unfolded to astonished 
Europe a new world, gave a spring to human exertions, and infu- 
sed a spirit of independence among all descriptions of characters. 
At the same time, the supine incaution, the boundless extrava- 
gance, the daring licentiousness, and the audacious extortions of 
the Popes and their dependant ecclesiastics, considerably eman- 
cipated many of the nations from their disgraceful and tremen- 
dous thraldom. 

At last, by the goodness of Providence, Wiclif, Huss, Jerom, 
Luther, Zuingle, Hamilton, Wishart, Latimer, Cranmer, Cal- 
vin, Knox, and their renowned coadjutors, were elevated to 
imperishable honor. Their Christian virtues, genius, learning, 
undaunted fortitude, and perseverance, by the sanction of 
Heaven, surmounted all impediments, battered the Babylonian 
fortress, which enclosed the embattled hosts of the Papacy, 
and established the magnificent Reformation, upon a basis 
hitherto immoveable. Their survivors enlarged the scene of 
their labors, resuscitated the gospel from the grave of tradition, 
Divine " worship in spirit and in truth" from the sepulchre 
of ceremonial observances, the Christian character from the 
death-like oblivion in which it had been so long incarcerated, 
and Messiah's Church from the degradation and torpor in which 
during several centuries it had been entombed. Since that 
period nearly 300 years have elapsed. Though dispossessed of 
some of its most terrific features, yet the character of that bloody 
bigot Mary; the savage barbarity of the Guises ; the unrelenting 
and execrably inhuman temper of Charles IX. ; the martyrdoms 
occasioned by the Duke of Alva ; the deluges of Protestant 
blood which have overflowed Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, and 



ANTI'CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 53 

Ireland ; and the horrors commanded by Louis XIV. ; with other 
memorable instances in modern history — all demonstrate that 
the spirit of Popery is the same in every age ; and that when 
the destined period shall arrive, similar desolations will be ex- 
perienced throughout the ten kingdoms, by the witnesses who 
shall " die in the Lord." 

How mysterious are the dispensations of God in the direction 
of his Church ! 

After this review of the prophetic testimony, we are disposed 
to inquire, Why did the Lord permit such ineffable absurdities 
to arise? And are equally astonished, when we reflect upon 
their predominance and protracted duration. The fact furnishes 
an irrefragable attestation to the humiliating truths, that man, by 
nature, is ever prone and willing to depart from Jehovah, ^nd 
that Apollyon is, emphatically, the God of this world. The 
whole moral world was lying in wickedness ; and with the ex- 
ception of Judea, enveloped in impervious clouds of black dark- 
ness. To disperse the wretched gloom, the Sun of Righteousness 
arose, with healing beneath his wings. With great joy the 
people saw the marvellous light ; but a conflict arose between 
the disturbers of the creation of God, and the servants of the 
Prince of Peace. During 280 years the contest was continued 
with little intermission, and could only be decided by the com- 
plete overthrow of one of the combatants. On the part of Satan, 
every abomination was exhibited toward his antagonists. The 
carnal weapons were sharpened to their utmost edge against the 
spiritual armor, and in the battle myriads of Immanuel's sheep 
were transferred from the cross to the crown, amid the most ex- 
cruciating torture. The vision was for an appointed time, and 
although it tarried, they waited for it until it came. " The sixth 
seal was opened ; the great earthquake occurred ; the sun be- 
came black ; the. moon became as blood ; the stars of heaven 
fell ; the heavens departed ; every mountain and island was 
moved;" and all orders of Satan's troops " hid themselves in the 
dens and rocks of the mountains, for the great day of his wrath" 
came, andtione of them were "able to stand." 

5* 



54 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

After so complete a demolition of the ancient idolatry, the 
consummate exposure of its unhallowed mysteries and autho- 
rized corruption, and the establishment by law, and by insuper- 
able force, of the sublimely *' pure and undefiled religion," which 
is " the life and immortality brought to light by the gospel," com- 
bined with the triumphant evangelical hosannas of that mnlti- 
tu3e which no man could number ; — who could have supposed 
that Christianity could have been metamorphosed so as to 
display all the abhorrent qualities of the Bacchanalian mytho- 
logy? Yet the nations governed by Papal authority are 
scarcely more evangelized, than to change the worship of a 
block of marble, sculptured, and denominated Jupiter, or Venus, 
for an image of the Virgin Mary, or Peter, or of an imaginary 
disimbodied saint. To that astonishing departure from the 
gospel, must be added the incorporation of the most sanguinary 
feature impressed upon the idolatrous system. That philanthropy 
which the gospel so earnestly and continually inculcates, as the 
grand effect and evidence of the converting grace effused by the 
ever blessed Spirit, was absorbed in a furious malignity, inces- 
santly devouring, cruel and insatiable as the grave. At the 
approach of the Papal adherents, all that was enlightened, pure, 
and devotional, disappeared. The substance of evangelical reli- 
gion vanished, and in its stead, scarcely a shadowy similitude re- 
mained. That whole fabric, called Popery, is founded upon an 
impenetrable ignorance of the gospel of Christ ; and its long- 
continued ascendency has been perpetuated by that combination 
of spiritual tyrants, who contrived during several centuries to bind 
the world in the most degrading mental vassalage. Illumination 
only is requisite to demolish the Papal corruptions, equally with 
the Mohammedan apostacy. Under the withering control of that 
appalling and incomparable despotism of the dragon's beast and 
the false prophet, the ten kingdoms of the Roman empire, the ten 
horns of the beast, became gradually more and more palsied ; 
until an almost incurable lethargy pervaded their whole boun- 
daries. The activity inspired by the discovery of America, and 
the excitement enkindled by the rapid propagation of knowledge 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 55 

through the then novel art of printing, loosened the chains of 
darkness and coercion with which the human soul had so long 
been fettered, and finally enabled the enterprising, and the learned, 
and the pious, to " fight the good fight of faith ;" and by thus 
undermining the Papal fortress, to justify that anticipation which 
exults in the song of triumph over its total and irrecoverable 
destruction. In reviewing the moral degradation and the intel- 
lectual stupor of that desolate period in the annals of the human 
family, we are lost in astonishment, at the mysteriousness of the 
Divine government, the wondrous reaction of human affairs, the 
exact retribution which the Supreme Governor often awards to 
mankind, even in this world, and the almost insuperable ten- 
dency that exists in the hearts of men to depart from the living 
God. 

The gradual introduction of the Papal superstitions, and the 
sudden establishment of the delusions originally promulged at 
Mecca, verify the prophetic truth, " The Lord is with you, if you 
be with him ; but if you forsake him, he will forsake you." That 
infallible declaration is exemplified in all its humiliating force, 
by the annals of the nominal Church during the three hundred 
years subsequent to Constantine's publicly authoritative recog- 
nition of the gospel as the imperial religion. Spiritual devo- 
tion was generally unknown. The worship of God was trans- 
formed into a carnal exterior round of services, by which the 
light of evangelical truth was obscured. The sanctity of the 
Divine commandments was obliterated by substitutes, which 
altogether commuted the whole moral system, and by the tenden- 
cy to auricular confession and priestly absolution. And as the 
progress of corruption is continually accelerating, it was soon 
developed in all its enormity, evincing, that " men love darkness 
rather than light, because their deeds are evil." 

It is not surprise merely which affects us in contemplating 
those inscrutable movements of the Providential system ; but 
also gratitude, that God, who presides over all terrestrial affairs, 
has so directed those apparently inexplicable and contradictory 
events, that they furnish the strongest possible conviction to our 



56 PREDICTIONS OF THE 

minds of the truth which the Sacred Scriptures develop, and 
thus, through Divine influence, they contribute most essentially 
to our spiritual edification. " He maketh the wrath of man to 
praise him, and the remainder of that wrath he restrains." The 
monks and friars, whose Argus eyes explored every recess, 
however secret, to seize all the copies of the Sacred Volume, that 
their contents might be unknown to the multitudes over whom 
they had obtained a resistless sway, entombed the manuscripts 
which they collected in oblivion, within the walls of their ab- 
beys : and it is remarkable, that, under Divine control, that 
measure became the safeguard of the Scriptures. 

The manuscripts which were obtained either by intimidation, 
or force, or fraud, were deposited in the monasteries and the large 
collegiate institutions as receptacles of safety. As those edifices 
were legalized as perfect sanctuaries, they were seldom assailed ; 
and thus became treasuries in which were securely intrusted 
any articles, however costly or precious. Had the ingenuity of 
the monks and friars equalled their malignity, and their aversion 
to the Scriptures, they would irrecoverably have destroyed all the 
copies which could have been grasped. But they were taken in 
their own craftiness. He who makes " all things work to- 
gether for good to them that love God, to the called according 
to his purpose," so regulated all the corrupt passions of men, 
that they who never rested from the unholy employ, to obliterate 
the energy of revealed truth, and to extirpate the charter of re- 
demption from its residence on earth, became, in the days of 
darkness, and through the centuries of moral and spiritual pal- 
pable gloom, the unassailable guardians of its imperishable 
truths, promises, and commands. 

Another circumstance, not less impressive, must also be re- 
membered. In declaring the Latin version the only authorized 
text of Scripture, it became necessary for the sake of those who 
continued to use that language, both in speaking and writing, 
and who consequently might comprehend the oracles of truth, 
often to exhibit the Old and New Testament, that skeptical dis- 
puters and religious dissenters might be convinced that the 



ANTI-CHRISTIAN APOSTACIES. 5l 

various errors and mummeries of Popery were truly sanctioned 
by the Founder of the Church and his Apostles. Hence the 
exposure necessary even to change the tenor of the Divine 
word, so that it might authorize all the new follies, either in 
faith, worship, or practice, which were continually increasing in 
the Church, naturally tended to remind those who had never 
seen the gospels that such a book existed, in its authority so par- 
amount, that it was deemed, in all cases of difficulty, that stan- 
dard of verity alone, from the decision of which no appeal is ad- 
missible. He, the Supreme, who does as he pleases in the midst 
of the armies of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, 
by this means illustrated truth to the sincere and candid in- 
quirer ; and so maintained the smoking flax, that it could not be 
totally extinguished. To this cause may be ascribed the oppo- 
sition to the Papacy which existed at every period, from the rise 
of the Waldenses to the more furious assaults made upon the 
battiement-s of Antichrist by the Reformers of the sixteenth 
century. 

When we consider, therefore, the nature, progress, extent, and 
predominance of Popery, originating in the corruption of un- 
godly despots and hierarchs — w^hen we reflect upon the strictly 
accurate delineation of all those events given so many hundreds 
of years before — when we observe the wonder-working displays 
of the perfections of God, as unfolded in his boundlessly wise 
superintendence of those discordant and baneful occurrences — 
when we behold a constant interference, propelling even the 
wickedness of man to fulfil the dispensations of Divine wisdom 
and mercy — and when we perceive that all the concerns of sev- 
eral centuries only operated to certify the Oracles of God — we 
should realize the incalculable value of that truth which the 
Savior has revealed; and learn caution, watchfulness, and a 
more powerful solicitude rightly to improve our inestimable 
privileges. Our light to life, is *'the glorious gospel of the ever 
blessed God.'* 



NOTE. 

Since the previous dissertation was stereotyped, I have perused an 
interesting and luminous work, in three volumes, recently issued in 
Scotland. It is entitled, "The Structure and Unity of the Apocalypse:'* 
By David Robertson. As it partially differs from several illustrations of 
the prophecies which have already been given ; and as the argumenta- 
tion upon some of the topics is plausible ; while the spirit and tendency 
of the whole are truly evangelical and edifying ; I have appended the 
author's own " outline of the Apocalypse." 

Period I.— The Seals. 

1. The first seal "presents Christ on the white horse of the gospel, con- 
quering and to conquer." 

2. The second seal " shows the civil power of the Roman empire, persecu- 
ting the followers of Christ with the great sword of the state, and thus taking 
peace from the earth." 

3. The third seal " displays a black horse, and hira who sits on it, with a 
yoke in his hand, and proclaiming scarcity and famine. This denotes the 
corrupt Christian clergy imposing the yoke of ecclesiastical authority and su- 
perstitious ceremonies, seUing the gospel and its pnvileges for money, and 
killing the souls of men with spiritual famine." 

4. The fourth seal " displays a green horse and a rider, who kills both with 
the sword and with famine. This denotes the combined system of Church and 
State introduced by Constantine, and which uses the weapons of both its pre- 
cursors." 

"These are the four characters of the Apocalypse. The first, on the white 
horse, conquers in the end, and reigns triumphant in glory." 

B. The fifth seal " discovers the Christian party crying for vengeance for 
the blood of the martyrs, when the green horse appeared. They were mis- 
taken in their view of his character ; and the vengeance for which they cry was 
delayed." 

6. The sixth seal "discovers the terrors of the other party, and describes 
the earthquake which took place at the time." 

Period II. — The Trumpets. 

1. The first trumpet " denotes the irruption of the Northern Barbarians, 
who overturned the imperial throne, and settled within the empire. This 
trumpet drove the Church into the wilderness, caused the witnesses of God 
to put on sackcloth, and strengthened the rider on the red horse, by setting up 
the system of Gothic tyranny in Europe." 

2. The second trumpet " casts a great mountain burning with fire into the 
sea. That was the Saracen empire, with the fire of God's wrath for the sins 
of nominal Christians. This strengthened the rider on the green horse, by 
drawing more close the connection between Church and State ; and by setting 
up the Mohammedan power, which persecutes the adherents of every other 
system. It separated Africa from the Western empire." 

3. The third trumpet " announced the fall of the Pope from his spiritual 



NOTE. 59 

sphere to the rank of a temporal prince, the imbittering of the waters by 
image- worship, and the institution of compulsory tithes. This strengthened 
the rider on the black horse." 

4. The fourth trumpet " darkened the sun, moon, and stars." By which 
are meant the concealment of the Bible, the perversion of the ordinances, and 
the ignorance and corruption of the ministers through the Papacy. 

An angel next proclaimed, that the three following trumpets would unfold 
woes to the inbabiters of the earth. 

5. Under the fifth trumpet, the power of the enemies of Christ was *' displayed 
in darkening the sun and air with the smoke of the pit, and sending forth the 
crusading locusts on the earth. Toward the close of that trumpet, in the year 
1249, a faint dawn of light appeared in the East." 

6. The sixth trumpet loosed the four angels of Euphrates, the Turkish 
horsemen. Their hour, day, month, and year, began in 1281, and ended in 
1672. During which period, the Reformation occurred ; the witnesses were 
encouraged and strengthened ; the second or two-horned beast arose and took 
the power, and part of the dominion of the first beast. 

Period III.— The Vials, 
The rider on the red horse is described as a red dragon. The rider on the 
green horse appeared as a beast, with seven heads and ten horns. The rider 
on the black horse gradually lost his separate subsistence and individuahty, 
till he was merged in the green horse altogether. Then the beast with two 
horns like a lamb came forward to fill up his place. By these names, "the 
dragon, the beast, and the false prophet," the three enemies are known under 
the vials. 

1. The first vial was *' poured on the earth in 1688 ; by introducing liberty 
of conscience, and thus bringing the Church out of the wilderness, enabling 
the witnesses to lay aside their sackcloth, advancing them to safety and 
honor in society, and inflicting a noisome and grievous sore on all who had 
the mark of the beast or worshipped his image." 

2. The second vial was "poured on the sea at the French revolution, and 
reversed the effects of the second trumpet, by loosening the connection be- 
tween Church and State, restoring Africa to the European empire, resuscita- 
ting the Eastern empire in the independence of Greece, and securing liberty 
of conscience in all the dominions of Turkey and France. It weakened the 

en-horned beast of the sea." 

The five succeeding vials are not elucidated by Mr. Robertson, because he 
considers them as unfulfilled visions. 

Without adverting to minor diflTerences, there are decisive objections 
to this application of some of the prophecies to those historical occur- 
rences which are cited. 

The grand principle of interpretation adopted by Mr. Robertson, is 
obviously correct : that the Apostolic visions refer solely to the Church, 
and to those prominent civil occurrences which immediately afiect its 
prosperity. The application of the seals and of the trumpets involves no 
substantial discordance, except on the fifth, which applies to the crusades, 
the visiQa which has usually been supposed to delineate the Mohamme- 



60 . NOTE. 

dan apostacy. But that reference of the predictions does not materially 
change the aspect of the general scheme. 

The principal exceptions to Mr, Robertson's comment, and they appear 
insuperable, are to his views on the subject of the witnesses. Nothing 
seems to be more evident, than that " the Spirit of Prophecy, which is 
the testimony of Jesus," intended to convey this general intimation ; that 
the existence of the witnesses should be commensurate and coeval with 
the persecuting reign of the beast, and that they shall finish their testi- 
mony at the same time, when his power shall virtually be destroyed. 
The resurrection of the witnesses is adduced merely as a confirmation of 
their testimony for the confusion of their enemies ; and not, that they 
may recommence "their prophesying ;" because the rapidly approaching 
demolition of Babylon the great will render that testimony altogether 
superfluous. 

Mr. Robertson interprets the '' beast with two horns as a lamb, and 
speaking like a dragon," Revelation 13: 11-18, to be those Protestant 
establishments of Church and State which succeeded to the anti-chris- 
tian domination. This is a doubtful hypothesis. Whether the first 
and second vials are rightly applied by him, also appears very dubious j 
especially as it cannot be admitted, that the period of 1260 years did ter- 
minate in 1688, the period which he has specified. That view seems to 
be entirely fallacious ; because many very memorable instances of san- 
guinary Papal persecution have occurred since that epoch. The revo- 
cation of the Edict of Nantz ; the dreadful massacres in Piedmont ; the 
almost unceasing anguish and tortures of the witnesses in Bohemia 
and Hungary, during the last 150 years ; and the nearly undiminished 
spiritual power of the Popedom in the greater part of the ten horns of 
the beast, seem to declare, without any doubt, that the witnesses still 
prophesy in sackcloth. To which may be subjoined another remarkable 
fact, that probably at no period since the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century, have the votaries of the Pontifical despotism made more stre- 
nuous efforts to regain their lost supremacy, and to obstruct the progress 
of '' pure religion and undefiled," than during the present generation. 

It should also be remembered, that although to the sounding of the 
sixth trumpet, in the grand points, almost all Protestant commentators 
agree; yet beyond that period, every picture seems so mysterious and in- 
tangible, that the most erudite and skilful explorers of prophecy are 
utterly bewildered to develop any luminous interpretation, and to make 
any consistent and definite application of modern history to the Apo- 
calyptic vision : thereby evincing their incompetency satisfactorily to 
show us " that which is noted in the Scripture of Truth." 



CHAPTER I. 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 



History of the Development and Establishment of the Superstitious Opinions^ 
Idolatrous Ceremonies^ and Ecclesiastical Power of the Pontifoate^ and 
of the Papal Hierarchy ; from the Apostolic Age to the Reformation in 
the Sixteenth Century. 

The annals of the Christian Church impressively teach us, 
that the most perfect gift of "the Father of Lights," when 
transferred to man, necessarily becomes deteriorated. That 
kingdom of God which is " righteousness, peace, and joy in the 
Holy Ghost," and which Imrnanuel condescended to appear 
upon earth to establish, w^as scarcely founded, when, through 
Satan's wiles, ungodly men began to pervert and corrupt it. 
Even Apostles themselves, and in the presence of their glorious 
Lord and Master, engaged in "strife, which of them should be 
accounted the greatest." 

Jesus Christ also predicted that an early defection should arise 
in his Church, which departure from the truth should be pro- 
moted by false and seducing teachers. Matthew 24 : 11. The 
Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles written by them, are re- 
plete with testimony w^hich certifies the melancholy fact. Peter, 
in his second Epistle, 2:1, announces the progress of the evil 
" There shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall 
bring in damnable heresies ;" and Paul imbodies the working 
of Satan in one general declaration concerning that corruption 
in doctrine and morals, w^hich renders the application precisely 
and only descriptive of the Papal hierarchy. '* In the latter 
times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing 
spirits and doctrines of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy, forbid- 
ding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats." 1 Tim- 
6 



62 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

othy 4 : 1-3. Had the inspired writer been directed to insert 
Popery, instead of those remarkable and extraordinary attri- 
butes, as Isaiah was commanded to personify and name Cyrus, 
the prophecy would not have been more evident, and would 
have been far less convincing. 

Of that " mystery of iniquity," Paul also declared that it then 
worked. 2 Thessalonians 2 : 7. The tares were sown, and a 
harvest of anti-christian fruits might be anticipated. To which 
John adds in his first Epistle, 2: 18, "Ye have heard that 
Antichrist shall come, even now there are many Antichrists. 
The Man of Sin, the great head of the Apostacy, had not ap 
peared ; but his pioneers, imbued with his impious spirit and 
motives, were preparing for his manifestation. " Many false 
prophets are gone out into the world," says John, in his first 
Epistle; 4:1; which truth was verified by those pretended 
Christians who always endeavored to conjoin the law with the 
gospel, and the Jewish ceremonial with the spiritual devotions 
of Messiah's Church. 

The fundamental principle of all impiety and irreligion, 
*' will- worship," or the service of God according to men's own 
inventions, had commenced within thirty years after the effusion 
of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Paul describes that ab- 
horrent substitution- of " the doctrines of men, and rudiments of 
the world" for the commandm.ent of God, as " the worshipping 
of angels," the effect of a pretended " voluntary humility;" but 
which was, in truth, the result of a *' fleshly mind puffed up ;" 
and "neglecting of the body," or a submission to excessive 
severities from the fallacious hope of meriting the Divine favor 
by those unauthorized penances. That " will-worship" is the 
grand characteristic of Popery ; and so early did the adversary 
commence his attempts against the Church of God, that the 
Apostle warned " the saints and faithful brethren in Christ at 
Colosse," against that incipient development of the grand apos- 
tacy. Chapter 2: 16-23. 

There is another remarkable Scriptural illustration of the ex- 
istence in men of "an evil heart of unbelief in departing from 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 63 

■ /the living God." Hebrews 3: 12. In his first Epistle, 5 : 21, 
John thus admonishes the Churches : *' Keep yourselves from 
idols." It is therefore evident, that false principles were then 
inculcated under the Christian name, which immediately tended 
to idolatry ; and Simon Magus, that arch-heretic who was con-' 
demned by Peter, it is believed, maintained that angels and their 
images ought to be adored. Justin Martyr testifies, that a statue 
had been erected to that impostor ; which, with images both of 
himself and of Helen, his female associate, were extensively 
honored as sacredr objects. Therefore, image-worship, which 
is one of the grand distinguishing marks of Romanism, may 
clearly be traced to the primitive heretics. 

But the backsliding of the early transgressors was not re- 
stricted merely to erroneous theories ; it was also accompanied 
by practical corruption. The Apostle Jude cautioned his 
Christian brethren against *' filthy dreamers," or impure sedu- 
cers, who fascinated the people by false and sensual doctrines. 
Of a similar character is the authoritative testimony of the Lord 
Jesus himself, in his Epistles sent by John to the Churches of 
Ephesus, Pergamos, and Thyatira : Revelation 2. Those hypo- 
critical teachers professed Christianity, but mixed Judaism with 
their system, and also tolerated the utmost sensuality. Popery 
combines all those varied corrupt mixtures, carried out into their 
full operation and amplitude, with the worst characteristics and 
abominations of Paganism. 

A concise review of the Christian Church, during the primi- 
tive centuries, and then of the Popedom, after the Roman Pon- 
tiif was generally recognized by the European nations as their 
spiritual infallible, will convince us that the community of which 
the Pope is the chief is that modern anti-christian Babylon the 
great, which "the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his 
mouth, and the brightness of his coming." 2 Thessalonians 2 : 8, 
Century I. Although the foundation of that long degene- 
racy called Popery' was firmly laid prior to the death of John 
the Apostle, and many errors and delusions were widely propa- 
gated and believed, yet the purity and simplicity of evangelical 



64 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

truth, worship, and discipline, were so predominant and univer- 
sal, that Hegesippus thus characterized the Christian Church 
of that period : " JJagOsvog xadaga xai OLdiacpdoqog s^eivev jj sx^ 
idrjcna.''^ In the first age, *' the Church remained a pure and 
uncorrupted virgin." Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., Lib. 3, Cap. 32. 
That testimony is ratified by the Apostle, even in reference to 
** the called of Jesus Christ in Rome, beloved of God ;" of whom 
Paul recorded, that " their faith was spoken of throughout the 
whole world." Romans 1:8. 

The Sacred Volume comprises the only surviving narrative of 
the first century and the Apostolic age. " Jesus Christ, the head 
of the Church, who is the faithful witness," seems purposely to 
have interposed an impassable gulf between the close of the 
sacred canonical books and the earliest authentic writings of 
uninspired authors. In addition to which very important con- 
sideration, it must be subjoined, that to ascertain with any con- 
fidence the genuineness of those parts of the writings extant 
which bear the names of the earliest martyrs of the second cen- 
tury, is almost impossible. 

It must be recollected, therefore, as of the utmost moment in 
the controversy with Papists, that none of the authors of the New 
Testament, neither Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, nor 
Peter himself, nor Paul, nor James, nor Jude, nor John, even 
in his prophecies adverting to the condition and state of Chris- 
tians until " the holy city, New Jerusalem, shall come down 
from God out of heaven, and the tabernacle of God shall be with 
men" — not one of those inspired writers gives us the least inti- 
mation concerning the universal Pontificate of Peter ; his jour- 
neys and residence at Antioch and Rome; his bishopric at 
Antioch, and his episcopate at Rome during twenty-five years; 
which facts are utterly impossible according to Scriptural chro- 
nology ; the acts of Peter at Rome; his Pontifical throne; his 
contest with Simon Magus ; his appointment of a successor ; 
and the place and time of his martyrdom. " Quod tamen," says 
Godavius, Pref Hist. Eccles., " cognoscere nostra vehementer 
intererat." But if all those topics cannot be demonstrated, the 



I 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 65 

foundation of the Papacy is destroyed. The first emission of all 
the legends respecting Peter's residence and bishopric at Rome 
was by Jerom, in his translation of the chronicles of Eusebius. 
In fact, nothing certain is known, or can yet be discovered, re- 
specting the Apostles and their immediate successors, except the 
narratives or intimations in the New Testament. 

During the first century, Christian ministers of whatever 
name, whether called pastors, teachers, rulers, or elders, were 
of the same authority. The titles, bishops and presbyters, are 
used as synonymes. Acts 20 : 17, 28 ; Titus 1 : 5, 7. They were 
identical in duties, 1 Peter 5:2; qualities, 1 Timothy 3 : 2, 8 ; 
and there were more than one of those servants in a single 
Church, Acts 20: 28; Philippians 1 : 1. 

In addition to that fact, which overthrows the usurped Pontifi- 
cal authority, not one expression or implication respecting 
transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, the adoration of the 
host, communion in one kind, image-worship, Mariolatr}^ the 
invocation of saints, auricular confession, Papal indulgences, 
purgatory, the celibacy of priests, &c., or any other of the dis- 
tinctive dogmas and rites of Romanism, can possibly be dis- 
covered. 

Century II. As the Churches became severed from the 
Apostolic era, they gradually receded from their predecessors 
in doctrinal purity, holiness of manners, simplicity of rites, 
strictness of discipline, and spiritual peace. They were mani- 
festly adulterated by impostors and false teachers ; who, in the 
days of Ignatius, as is evident from the epistles which bear his 
name, strenuously endeavored to seduce the disciples from the 
doctrines and practice of the gospel. During the second cen- 
tury, that peculiar characteristic of Popery was unveiled; its 
combined strictness and laxity ; for Romanism enjoins celibacy 
and permits sensuality; and tolerates equally the grossest licen- 
tiousness and the severest austerities. Thus, some of the here- 
tics of that period openly justified all lew^dness, while others 
denounced the conjugal life, and the eating of flesh for food; 
both of which are indelible features of the Papal apostacy. 



6^ ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

About the year 150, commenced that superstitious custom of 
keeping- days and times, which afterwards was displayed in the 
forty days fast, called Lent. The controversy respecting the 
period of celebrating the Lord's resurrection, whether on the 
fourteenth day of the moon, or on the ensuing Lord's day, agi- 
tated the Churches throughout the Roman empire. That colli- 
sion produced the first instance of that Pontifical arrogance, 
which in subsequent ages desolated the nations. Victor, the 
Roman prelate, fulminated his anathema against the Eastern 
Christians ; but both his act and spirit were universally con- 
demned. 

The external forms of religion continued simple and un- 
adorned, and divested of all pomp and superstition. Not the 
least vestige is discoverable of any of the Papal traditions; either 
respecting the Pontificate, in its universality or infallibility ; or 
creature- worship ; or purgatory, with its essential blasphemous 
adjuncts ; or the mass, with its impious and irrational dogmas 
and idolatrous rites, or monachism, under any of its modifica- 
tions. Upon all those and the collateral topics, the writers of 
the second century are silent as the tomb. Even the term mass 
was unknown ; the bread was broken by the ministers, and the 
elements distributed by the deacons ; and the celebration was at- 
tended by the bishop or presbyter and deacon in their ordinary 
dress ; for the sacerdotal vestments, after the custom of the 
heathen priests, were subsequently introduced. Tertullian Apo- 
log. de Pallio.— Valesius Notis ad Eusebium. 

The life of the Christians was a practical illustration of piety 
towards God and love to man ; whence they were called brethren 
and Sisters. They prayed for the salvation of their enemies. 
All persons, young and old, of both sexes, intensely studied the 
Sacred Scriptures. Every Pagan sport and theatre they stu- 
diously avoided. Hence, the disciples of Jesus were distinguish- 
ed for their modesty of demeanor, frugal expenditures, simplicity 
in dress, and courteous manners. Justin Apolog. 1 1. — Tatian. — 
Tertullian de Spectaculis. — Ireneus, Lib. 3. Cap. 4. — Eusebius, 
Lib, 5. Cap. 20. 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 67 

All the grades of ecclesiastical dignities, with which posterior 
a^es were oppressed, were unknown during the second century. 
Popes, cardinals, patriarchs, metropolitans, archbishops, &(r., 
then had no existence, even in imagination. However, a basis 
was laid for the Pontifical throne ; for the minister of the prin- 
cipal congregation, in the chief cities in the different countries 
and provinces, began to assume an unhallowed jurisdiction ; and 
the title bishop was gradually losing its primitive meaning; 
and becoming more restricted to him who generally presided at 
the meetings of the ministers and deacons within the vicinity : 
although bishops and presbyters, after apostolic example and 
practice, were chosen by popular suffrage. Blondel de Jureple- 
bis in eccles. regim. Yet the office and power of bishop, in the 
novel sense of the appellative, were not universally adopted ; be- 
cause Polycarp, in his Epistle to the Philippians, mentions only 
presbyters and deacons. 

Century III. It is demonstrable, that the perversion of the 
Scriptures and the corruption of Christianity, by incorporating 
heathenish principles and customs with it, fearfully advanced 
during the third century, notwithstanding all the storms of per- 
secution with which the followers of the Lamb were scathed. 
The testimony of Cyprian, Epist. ad Pomp., is very affecting : — 
" Ad hoc malorum devoluta est Ecclesia Dei et sponsa Christi, 
utad celebranda sacramenta celestia, disciplinam lux de tene- 
bris mutuetur, et id faciunt Christiani, quod Antichristi faciunt. 
The Church of God and Spouse of Christ is fallen into that 
evil state, that to celebrate the heavenly mysteries, light borrows 
discipline from the darkness, and Christians do that which Anti- 
christ performs." 

The truth of that martyr's melancholy complaint appears in 
the increase of festivals; for in addition to the observance of the 
Lord's resurrection, the Churches commemorated the nativity 
of Christ, Nicephorus Lib. 7, Cap. 6 ; and the descent of the 
Holy Ghost. Days were also dedicated to honor the martyrs ; 
Tertullian de Coron. Milit. To which was added, the super- 
stitious practice of kneeling or standing when engaged ih 



^ ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP THE POPEDOM. 

public prayer at different seasons. Among other corruptions, 
the following were then introduced. The sign of the cross on 
the forehead in baptism, with oil, milk, and honey. Water was 
often mixed with the sacramental wine. Bread from the Lord's 
table was also preserved, that it might be sent to sick persons. 
The prelates were almost all employed in aggrandizing their 
own superiority ; and in disputing with each other respecting 
the objects of their inordinate ambition. Public repentance was 
abused, either by sinful relaxation or unchristian severity ; and 
favors were granted to the guilty, upon the application of those 
Christians who were imprisoned and waiting for their martyr- 
dom. That was the beginning of the system of Romish pen- 
ance, satisfaction for sin, and indulgences. The monastic life 
was highly eulogized ; and through the direful persecution of 
the Emperor Valerian, and the example of Paul the Hermit, the 
first monk, who fled from Alexandria about the year 260, and 
who continued in the desert until the general pacification 
achieved by Constantino, the state of celibacy was eulogized as 
almost equally acceptable to Jehovah as suffering and death for 
the sake of Christ. Those superstitious usages, however, were 
not universally adopted, nor were they required as indispensable. 
They were neither imposed nor enforced; but all believers were 
perfectly free to reject them ; because no person pretended to 
sustain them by the Holy Scriptures, but merely by tradition. 
Tertullian, de Coron. Milit.,thus develops the authority by which 
they were primarily introduced, *' Harum et aliarum ejusmodi 
disciplinarum, si leges expostules scripturarum, nullam invenies. 
Traditio tibi proetendetur auctrix, consuetudo confirmatrix, et 
fides observatrix." 

Notwithstanding the corruptions which have been enumera- 
ted, the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, as the Reformed 
Churches now believe, were the creed of the Christians during 
the third century. Although the prominent preachers and 
authors of that period inculcated many errors and observances 
of an anti-christian tendency, yet the canon of Scripture w-as 
retained in its purity, sufficiency, and authority, unadulterated 



!■ 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 69 

by human traditions : and the worship of Jehovah was not pro- 
faned by the adoration or invocation of any creatures or images. 
It is also very evident from Origen and Cyprian, that ahhough 
there were many confused and unscriptural notions concerning 
the connection between the departed saints and the visible 
Church, yet, as Spanheim remarks, Introd. ad Hist. Novi Test. 
Seculum 3, Sect 3, Page 285, ''cum Sanctis se orare, non ad 
sanctos, profitebantur. They professed that they prayed with 
the saints, and not to them." Purgatory at that period was 
totally unknown. 

Nevertheless, it is certain, that there was no small accession 
of superstitious principles and appendages, both in name and 
observance, to the ancient simple ritual, which evils originated 
in the following causes. The right of each Church to appoint 
their own forms — a desire to attract greater reverence to their 
sacred things — the instruction of the ignorant by external sym- 
bols — and the solicitude to induce the Pagans to profess the 
Christian faith. Hence those epithets which are contrary to 
the gospel became common ; altar, for the Lord's table ; priests, 
instead of preachers or ministers ; anointings ; wax lights ; in- 
accessible mysteries ; commemorations of the dead ; consecra- 
tion of virgins, &c. That unscriptural phraseology, with the 
wide dispersion of the Christians in small fraternities over all 
parts of the empire, augmented popular superstition, clerical 
pomp, corruption in doctrine, and dissoluteness of manners. 

Notwithstanding those morbid additions to the original sim- 
plicity of Christian truth and devotion, yet the mass was not 
invented; communion in both kinds was continued; as Dal- 
Iceus proves in his Cult. Lat., Lib. 2, Cap. 18, by the testi- 
mony of Papal authors, who affirm : — " Semper et ubique ab 
ecclesioe primordiis usque ad Seculum XH., sub specie panis et 
vini communicabant fideles." 

Although some offered petitions for the departed martyrs, that 
they might be received into heaven, from an obvious perversion 
of the vision, Revelation 6:9-11; yet there was no interces- 



70 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

sion for the Apostles, or the Virgin Mary, or the saints ; and 
not an intimation can be found of any prayers to the dead. 

The grand defects of that period arose from the ambition, 
strife, fraudsj and calumnies, which existed among the prelates, 
and which gradually infected and debased the Churches. 
Cyprian, Epist. 7, and 69. Eusebius, Hist., Lib. 6, 7, 8, Cap. 1. 
^Presbyters, however, then continued to retain almost their 
primitive equality with the prelates, in ordination, judicial pro- 
ceedings, government, and all other ministerial acts. None of 
the posterior hierarchical offices were devised; for the term 
nana, Father, was commonly applicable to all ministers : and 
no peculiar power was considered inherent in any bishop, and 
much less in the Bishop of Rome; as is evident from Tertul- 
lian, who, to rebuke the arrogance of Victor, because he had 
fulminated his excommunication against the Asiatic Christians, 
on account of the celebration of Easter, in his book De Pudic, 
applies to that arrogant usurper, in a sarcastic and ironical man- 
ner, the title, " Episcopum Episcoporum, Bishop of bishops." 

The congregational assembly also possessed supreme author- 
ity in the final decision of all questions concerning the govern- 
ment of the Church, the administration of discipline, the recep- 
tion and exclusion of members, and the election and ordination 
of ministers. Epist. ad Cyprian, 31 ; Constitution. Lib. 8, Cap. 
4. TertuUian Apolog; Cyprian, Epist. 28. 

It must also be recorded, that the ministers used their ordi- 
nary dress, and that no one of the sacerdotal or pontifical vest- 
ments, copied from the priests of the heathen Pantheon, had 
then been introduced into the Church. Euseb. Hist., Lib. 6, 
Cap. 19. The marriage of Christian preachers was also unre- 
stricted. 

Two legends, which were invented at that period, lucidly de- 
velop the progressive departure from the gospel. One fabulous 
narrative comprised the doings of the seven Ephesian sleepers ; 
and the other is the history of the fictitious Ursula and her 
eleven thousand virgin companions ; wheace the order of Ur- 
suline Nuns pretend to derive their origin. 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP THE POPEDOM. 71 

This review of the third century may properly be closed with 
the testimo'iy of Hegesippus, as preserved by Eusebius, Hist, 
Lib. 3, Cap. 32. '* After the sacred band of the Apostles had 
ceased to live by different kinds of death, and their age had 
passed away, to whom it was granted by Christ that they 
should hear with their own ears his Divine wisdom, then the 
false and crafty conspiracy of impious error took its rise from 
the deceitfulness of those who labored to disseminate doctrines 
totally different from the gospel, and who afterwards, none of 
the Apostles any longer surviving, dared barefacedly to oppose 
false and lying doctrines to the sincere word of truth." 

Century IV. The scenes which are exhibited in the pro- 
phetic delineation, from the twelfth verse of the sixth chapter of 
the Apocalypse to the end of the seventh chapter, constitute one 
of the most remarkable revolutions recorded in the annals of em- 
pires. That vision of the sixth seal has often been applied to 
the opening of that wondrous day of eternity which shall never 
know an evening — bui it was no doubt intended primarily to 
predict that astonishing succession of events and victories, by 
which all the imperial persecutors who had participated in the 
horrors of the era of martyrs, were successively and finally 
subjugated ; and by which a professed Christian became sole and 
undisputed master of the Roman territories. 

Constantius had uniformly displayed affection for the Chris- 
tians, so that in his portion of the empire the rage of persecu- 
tion was little known. Constantine his son, denominated the 
Great, having imbibed his father's predilections, became the 
object of aversion to all the other princes. Providentially he 
escaped from Galerius, the chief persecutor, who had designed 
his death, to his father's dominions ; and speedily after, he was 
proclaimed Emperor. A combination was immediately formed 
to divest him of his authority and life. Convinced that a con- 
test of indefinite magnitude and duration was unavoidable, and 
that the conflict involved not only his family interests, the en- 
joyment of his friends, but also the prosperity of the empire, and 
the apparent existence of that religion, the disciples of which 



\im 



7ji ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

were his only confidential and faithful adherents — his mind was 
grievously agitated with a view of the dangers which were in- 
volved in the coerced resort to arms to defend his dominions 
and people. 

Of the affection which the Britons, Gauls, and Spaniards,* 
bore to Constantius and his descendants, the following fact 
affords a beautiful illustration. All the exterior pomp and mag- 
nificence of royalty were excluded from that prince's humble 
mansion ; hence, when Diocletian's ambassadors visited him, 
they were astonished that no gold and silver were found on his 
table. Diocletian reproved him sharply for not taxing the 
people more, to enhance his own splendor and the imperial re- 
venue. Constantius assured him, that although vast masses of 
the precious metals were not locked up in his palaces, yet that 
upon any emergency he could display more wealth than all the 
other emperors combined. Diocletian appointed persons to go 
to his residence in France and examine into the truth of his de- 
claration. In the intermediate time, the emperor had sent to 
all the influential persons of every rank a general notice, that 
the public safety and necessities required them to deposite at his 
command and service, whatever of the precious metals they 
could spare for the sudden exigency. On the day of exhibition^ 
the envoys expressed their utmost astonishment at the immense 
quantities of gold and silver, bullion, coin, and plate, which had 
been sent to him. 

Constantine also was directed by all the other emperors, du- 
ring the fury of the persecution, to banish from his service 
every Christian. He transformed the order into a contrivance 
to ascertain his real friends. Having published the decree, that 
every person must become an idolater or be dismissed from his 
office, he was rejoiced to discover, that all his most faithful, and 
respected friends and officers deliberately chose disgrace, pover- 
ty, and death, rather than a violation of their consciences, and of 
the fear of God. The apostates were immediately discarded ; 
aaad to the inflexible Christians was committed the superinten- 
dence of all the affairs of his dominions. 



I 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 73 

With a most unequal force, Constantine contended against the 
arrayed strength of three fourths of the empire, supported by 
all the dignity of majesty, the confidence of victorious military 
genius, and the malignant opposition of Bacchanalian idolatry: 
but through Divine assistance, he completely fulfilled all that 
the sixth vseal developed; for "the kings of the earth, the great 
men and the mighty men, hid themselves in the dens and in the 
rocks of the mountains." In the year 324, all opposition hav- 
ing been exterminated, Constantine issued those edicts by which 
idolatry was almost trampled under foot, and Christianity pro- 
claimed the religion of the empire. 

The pure sentiments of the gospel were the general faith of 
the Christians of the fourth century. They held as truths un- 
deniable — that man was a corrupt, helpless, and hopeless sinner 
— that Jesus of Nazareth, Immanuel, had left the throne of glory, 
and having become incarnate, had died to atone for our sins — 
that his resurrection had verified the gospel which his Apostles 
preached and planted — that as Mediator, Prophet, Priest, and 
King, all who believe in him shall be saved from the curse of 
God's law; through him, that effulgence of spiritual light was 
diffused, by which men see their misery ; and that the Holy 
Spirit, by his Divine influences, transforms men from the bond- 
age of Satan, into the freedom of the children of God. To 
these truths were added, the personal experience, that every good 
thought, word, feeling, and action, were the result of God-like in- 
terposition ; and that faith, hope, love, and good works, flowed 
from promised Divine assistance; in short, that the redemption 
of man from his first serious impression to its consummation 
in glory, through all the stages of illumination, guidance, pro- 
tection, and deliverance, was only to be ascribed to the power of 
Him, who, on the cross of Calvary, proclaimed in never-dying^ 
energy, " It is finished." 

But it is lamentable to add, that the purity of truth was be- 
clouded with an almost endless train of absurd superstitions ; 
many of which were added from a desire to conciliate the Pa- 
gans. Among the idolaters it had been a universal practice, lb 

7 



74 ORIGIN AND PROGRESkS OF THE POPEDOM. 

form grand public processions and prayers, to appease the wrath 
of their ideal gods. Those were partially adopted in a ritual 
of great pomp, and were most magnificently celebrated among 
the professors of Christianity. In conjunction with that contra- 
diction to common sense, as the heathens had attributed to their 
temples and purifications, and to the statues of their gods, cer- 
tain propitious effects, — so to Christian houses of prayer, to water 
consecrated in a certain form, and to images of holy men, was 
referred the efficacy of that grace which the Holy Ghost alone 
can impart. 

This was the commencement of that system of Purgatory, 
which in subsequent ages was instituted; and the addition of 
solemn rites attached to particular days, increased the tendency 
to a departure from the faith of the saints. Hence arose the ex- 
hibition of those insincere practices, which subsequently intro- 
duced the whole Papal fabric ; facilitated the progress of the 
monkish system, and forced celibacy ; and sanctioned the estab- 
lishment of two maxims which subsequently unfolded all their 
iniquity. Towards the latter part of the fourth century, the 
Christian Church was defiled with the general belief, adoption, 
and practice, of those most abhorrent positions ; ** That falsehood 
is virtue, when by it the interests of the Church can be pro- 
moted ; and that errors in faith should be punished with torture 
and death." 

Eustathius produced a wide-spread discord through all the 
western part of Asia. His system would hdnre destroyed not 
only the oraer and happiness, but even the existence of society. 
He prohibited marriage and the use of flesh, enjoined immediate 
divorce to those who were united in matrimony, and permitted 
children and servants to violate the commands of their superiors 
upon religious pretexts. The disorders and confusion thus ex' 
cited were most baneful, and of long continuance. 

Another dissension arose respecting the identity of bishops 
and presbyters in the New Testament; and as it attacked all 
the power, and pomp, and pride, and dignity of the prelates, it 
is not surprising that the contest should have been violent and 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. tS 

extensive. An aversion to the superstitions which were then 
prevalent, enlarged the dispute ; for the bishops were striving 
for their usurpations, and their inferiors for their vain ceremo- 
nies and pageantry. The reformers were finally overpowered 
by numbers, and by the increase of ignorance and corruption. 

Essentially the external administration of the Church was not 
changed, but the pre-existent forms were modelled by Constan- 
tino so as to form the hierarchy, an exact counterpart to the civil 
constitution which he had established. He was the head of the 
Church, and his authority no man pretended to dispute. One 
privilege Christians enjoyed, — the choice of their own pastors 
and teachers ; but that right was finally exterminated in the ple- 
nitude of princely and Papal power. The primary act was an 
exclusion of the people from all part in the administration of 
ecclesiastical business. Then the bishops divested the pres- 
byters of any participation in the direction of the Church. 
Thus they perfectly monopolized the possessions and revenues 
of the people, which were contributed and exacted for the pro- 
fessed support of the gospel. As in all the tumults respecting 
the election of the bishops, the minority usually appealed to the 
Emperor, the result was, a usurpation by the bishops of the 
rights of the people ; and the transfer of many ecclesiastical con- 
cerns to the civil magistrates. > v- i>. 1 1 

The Bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria, prior to that 
period, had been considered as pre-eminent — ^to whom was 
added, after the transfer of the imperial residence from Rome, 
the Bishop of Constantinople. Those divisions introduced the 
convention of councils to decide religious controversies, and to 
regulate all the peculiar affairs of the Churches. An accurate 
idea may be formed of the nature and character of those bodies 
from one fact. Theodosius summoned a council to meet at Con- 
stantinople ; and among the other bishops who were directed 
to attend, Gregory Nazianzen was invited. He refused ; and 
in his reply to the Emperor, after reciting his virtues, which he 
loved, and his authority, which he acknowledged, he stated, that 
he could not conscientiously be present ; for he would not vo- 



ff^ ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

luntarily take a seat among chattering cranes and stupid geese ; 
and that he had never seen or heard of any benefit having 
flowed from those councils ; but, rather, that they were sources 
of division and contention. The history of nearly 1500 years 
has fully corroborated the justice of his opinion. 

The seeds of Papal supremacy then exhibited their fertility ; 
for the magnificence, the wealth, the power, and the patronage 
of the Bishop of Rome had so enormously increased, that the 
attainment of that station was the highest object of human ambi- 
tion. To counteract that arrogance, the Bishop of Constanti- 
nople was considered as his equal — and the strife proposed by 
their successors, finally conducted the adherents of the two dif- 
fering hierarchs, into that separation which still exists between 
the Greek and Roman apostates. Both are equally ignorant and 
.servile, and of course alike bigoted, even after the lapse of 
1400 years. 

Among the wonderful events recorded in the history of the 
fourth century, Augustin vras reduced to the mortifying confes- 
sion, that " the yoke under which the Jews formerly groaned, 
was more tolerable than that imposed upon many Christians in 
his time." Epist. 1 19. 

Vast numbers of Pagan ceremonies were introduced into the 
idolatrous worship, and those observances, with trivial alterations, 
yrore incorporated into the service of the one true God. Who 
can reflect without regret, that the decorum of pure and unde- 
filed religion was enveloped in mitres, robes, processions, and 
pageantry ? — and its spirituality sacrificed for the richness of the 
Churches, and the honor of those who contributed to their erection. 

The temples of idolatry were in a great measure subverted by 
the eflTects of Constantine's government ; but in their stead many 
splendid buildings were elevated — and to those who builded 
them v^ras allotted the right of appointing a preacher. This 
afforded to every patron the power of selecting his own minister 
and ceremonies. From that cause partly arose the numberless 
festivals, holydays, and days of fasting, which incredibly have 
contributed to the depopulation of the world. 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 77 

The Council of Nice was convened in the year 325 ; and not- 
withstanding they opposed the grosser doctrinal perversion of 
the Scriptures, yet they ratified a number of customs which 
were opposed to the simplicity of the gospel. Several new festi- 
vals, the epiphany, the annunciation of the Virgin Mary, and 
days of martyrs, were celebrated. Relics, pilgrimages to Jeru- 
salem, and the lent-fast, and monachism, received additional 
honors. Thus human traditions gradually usurped the supre- 
macy over evangelical truth; and ecclesiastical dignity, with 
opulence and worldly pomp, corrupted the minds and morals of 
all orders in the churches. 

The Sun of Righteousness continued to shed his healing 
beams upon his disciples, who then maintained the only gen- 
uine canonical books, and the authority and sufficiency of Scrip- 
ture as the Divinely-appointed interpreter of Jehovah's will. 

The churches also all were denominated Catholic, or Ortho- 
dox, because they professed the Apostolical faith. Jerom, Epist. 
95, ad Evagrium, records a remarkable distinction. He says, 
that there wasan essential difference '* inter ecclesiam Roma* 
nae Urbis, quae particularis, et ecclesiam Romani Orhis, diffii- 
sam xccTtt Ttaaav iriv oi7(ovfisvt]v, inter nationes omnes unum 
Christum adorantes, Romanorum scilicet nomine et privileges 
gaudentes." 

The style which was adopted by the theologians of the fourth 
century was objectionable. Their equivocal phraseology fur- 
nished the subsequent errorists with a plausible plea for their 
wild departures from the living God. Most of the writers of 
the fourth century maintained errors of different degrees; Span- 
heim, Introd. ad Hist., Seculum 4, Page 368. Vincent Lirinen- 
sis, in the next age, upon that important subject, Commonitore, 
Page 361, promulged this memorable decision: ** Patrium con- 
sensionem nee investigandam, nee sequendam in omnibus 
divinse legis qucestiunculis ; sed solum, certe pracipue, in fidei 
regula, quoe ad substantiam fidei Christian^, et symboli aposto- 
lici, pertineant." 

But the writers of that period totally disagreed from the mod- 

7# 



78 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

em Papists and the Council of Trent upon the canon, rites, dis- 
cipline, and church government ; although a large number of 
ceremonies was introduced from the Gentile idolatry. The ele- 
vation of the host was practised ; yet it was only for observation, 
and not to be adored. The first use of the word Mass appears in 
Ambrose, Epistol. 33. Private confession of sin, and the con- 
fessor priest, also, were authorized. Socrates Hist., Lib. 5, 
Cap. 19. 

The following preludes of Popery had become generally 
adopted, or were established ceremonial observances. From 
the Pagans they borrowed wax-tapers, burning by day-light and 
in the churches ; the scattering of incense ; distinction of meats ; 
veneration of relics ; and pilgrimages to certain supposed hal- 
lowed places. 

Invocation of saints was OjHered conditionally, *' if they could 
hear and understand ;" thus Nazianzen frequently expressed it, 
«< ev Ttg aot loyogy Orat. 2, in Julian. 

The introduction and public use of images into the churches 
were commenced at the latter part of the fourth century ; but 
that idolatry was strenuously opposed by Epiphanius, Epistle 
ad Johan. Hieroas. ; and Eliberitani, Can. 36, thus denounced it, 
" Placuit picturas in ecclesia esse non debere." 

The sign of the cross became general ; and the figure of the 
cross, according to the Eastern and Western forms, was adopted 
as a model by which to construct the sacred edifices. 

Prayers, which had been previously offered, as they professed, 
with the dead, were then presented for the dead ; not only for 
patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and others, but also for 
the damned. Chrysostom, Homil. 

The government and discipline of the churches realized a 
direful change after Constantine's triumph. Prelates usurped 
the sole power to preside, consecrate, ordain, reconcile penitents, 
and grant indulgences. According to the thirteenth canon of 
Ancyra, it was enacted, that presbyters should do nothing in the 
Church without the consent or mandate of the bishop. 

The monastic system was fearfully augmented during the 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 79 

fourth century, to the destruction of the national strength and 
prosperity. So numerous had friars and nuns become, that the 
4 Emperor Valens, after denouncing them as, " Ignavice sectato- 
res,^^ imbodied a large army of monks, whom he collected from 
Egypt alone, expressly to withstand the irruptions of the Goths 
and Vandals. Prosper. Chron., Oros. Lib. 7. Lex Quiddam 
Cod. de Decurion. 

In Egypt, at that period, was formed the order of nuns. Du- 
ring the anterior ages, the widows who had consecrated them- 
selves to God for the service of his Church and the afflicted 
Christian disciples, amid the scenes of persecution ; resided with 
their parents, and could always be released from their vow, 
which was conditional, and temporary only in obligation. The 
collection of young females in convents, near the monasteries of 
men, was a contrivance of the Egyptian monks in their secluded 
abodes. Nun is an ancient Egyptian word, and aptly expresses 
the character. It means a woman abjectly submissive in body, 
soul, and spirit, to the will of her superior — and thus completely 
unfolds, even in the term, the incurable corruption of conventual 
life. The loathsome wickedness which almost immediately at- 
tended that perversion of the law of nature and the claims of 
religion, is described by the ancient writers in the most pungent 
language. 

In connection with that " mystery of iniquity," a celibate life 
was extravagantly eulogized; and especially for the officers of 
the churches. Hence, about the year 390, Siricius, the Roman 
Prelate, issued his mandate prohibiting bishops, presbyters, and 
deacons, to marry. Epist. 1, ad Himer., Tarracon., Canon 7 : 
in which he declared that the marriage of ministers after their 
ordination is the same as the sin of adultery. His proof he pre- 
tended to derive from the words of Paul, Romans 8:8. " They 
who are in the flesh cannot please God." How profound must 
the universal ignorance have become, when the boasted arrogant 
chief of the Christian churches could thus pervert Scripture to 
sanction his corruptions. Great, wide-spread, and lasting con- 



80 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM, 

tentions proceeded from that most ungodly display of the grand 
apostacy. 

Century V. During the next hundred years the progress 
of the " falling away," which the Apostle Paul describes, 2 
Thessalonians 2, was rapid and continuous. Nevertheless, 
some degree of doctrinal purity was retained. The unadulte- 
rated canon of Scripture, with the distinguishing creed of the 
modern Reformed churches, constituted the basis of their faith. 
Augustin, who was the principal expositor of the dogmas, and 
ceremonies, and discipline of the Church at that period, most 
strenuously maintained the authority, perfection, and sufficiency 
of the Sacred Scriptures, as the sole judge of controversies. 
But through the pernicious influence and usurpations of those 
ecclesiastical pests, called cfouncils, several of the books usually 
denominated apocryphal were introduced, and permitted to he 
read during public worship ; until at length, on account of 
their capability of being adduced to sanction the Romish errors, 
and also of the forged additions which most probably were foisted 
into them, they were incorporated by the Papal advocates as a 
part of the Holy Bible. 

The controversies concerning the authority and extent of Tra- 
ditions, formed an ostensible part of the discussions which oc- 
curred among the devotees and opponents of the incipient 
hierarchy. Augustin, in his fourth book against the Donatists, 
Chapter 4, thus propounds the famous rule respecting tradition- 
** Quod universa tenet ecclesia, nee a conciliis institutum, sed 
semper retentum est, nonnisi apostolica authoritate traditum 
rectissime creditur." Whence it appears that those traditions 
are without authority, if it cannot be proved that the Universal 
Church always, and from the beginning, held them ; if they are 
not found in the Apostolic Epistles; and if they were invented 
among the Latins, or instituted by recent Councils, or by the 
Roman Prelates. 

The application of Augustin's canon determines that all the 
distinguishing articles of Popery are the working of Satan. No 
sane person would think of exploring the Sacred Volume to 



I 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 81 

discover the worship of images or relics ; Mariolatry and Ma- 
rianity ; the invocation of saints ; purgatory ; Papal indulgen- 
ces; auricular confession; transubstantiation ; the propitiatory 
sacrifice of the mass ; the adoration of the host ; processions, and 
the feast in honor of the sacrament ; solitary masses ; communion 
in one kind; the immaculate conception; and the universal 
Pontificate in infallibility and jurisdiction. Spanheim, Introd. ad 
Hist. Novi Test., Page 465. 

Augustin also constantly teaches that God alone is the only 
object of religious service, invocation, adoration, vows, offerings, 
*' Latrioe et Dulia," and that worship should not be offered in 
any manner to the Virgin Mary, or angels, or dead saints, or 
images, or the host. This decision is thus recorded in his work 
De Vera Relig., in the last chapter ; *' Honorandi sunt mortui 
propter imitaticem, non adorandi propter religionem. Honor- 
amus eos charitate, non servitute ; nee cis templa construimus," 
In his treatise De Moribus Ecclesise, Vol. L, he indignantly 
censures those who worshipped at the graves of the dead Chris- 
tians, and before their pictures. With which opinions, Leo. I., 
a boasted Roman Prelate, entirely coalesces. Sermo 7. 

The Popish doctrine of the real presence was unknown in his 
age; for Augustin expressly distinguishes, Tract. 26 and 59, in 
Job, between " Pan em Dominum, the Lord's bread ; and Panem 
Domini, the bread of the Lord." Theodoret also, in his Dia- 
logues, Chapter 11, always speaks of the bread and wine, or 
cup, as symbols, signs, images, or types of the Lord's body. 

The communion in one kind was expressly denied by Leo I., 
in his fourth Sermon de Gluadrag. ; and Gelasius, another epis- 
copal predecessor of the Popes, de Consecrat., Chapter 12, thus 
declares ; *' Divisio unius ejursdemque mysterii sine grand isa- 
crilegio non potest provenire." Auricular confession, and the 
sacerdotal power of absolution, cannot be proved to have existed 
either by Augustin, Leo, the Roman Pontiff) or the canons of 
the fourth century. Leo exho»rts those who lived in their sins, 
*' to remember the tremendous displeasure of the Supreme 
Judge ; to fly to the mercy of the omnipresent God ; and not to 



82 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

flatter themselves, because their consciences could not be open 
to priests and ministers." Sermo 5, de Gluadrag. Auricular 
confession then was not appointed. 

Notwithstanding the resistance of many champions for the 
truth, to error, absurdity, and corruption ; the departure from 
the simplicity of the gospel in every portion of the nominal 
Church was flagrant ; although in different degrees, according 
to the views and purity of the various ministers. Part of the 
Apocryphal books were introduced into the public assemblies ; 
images were worshipped ; miracles were ascribed to relics, and 
the sign of the cross ; through the credulity of ignorance, and the 
desire to proselyte the Gentiles. The belief in the gloom and 
fire of purgatory increased ; but at that period, the canonization 
of saints, and the purchase of souls out of limbo by indulgen- 
ces and masses for the deceased, had not commenced their 
deadly operation. 

That mighty and portentous evil, the celibacy of ecclesiastics, 
had become very general ; for that wicked Council which as- 
sembled at Carthage, decreed, " Episcopi, et presbyteri, et dia- 
coni, secundum propria statuta, ab uxoribus contineant ;" which 
accursed doctrine as the Roman Pontiffs perceived that it in- 
tensely augmented their power, gradually metamorphosed the 
face of the moral world, and of the Church of God. 

There was a vast increase of superstitions. Monachism was 
extended. Leo exchanged public for private confession. The 
litany, or the system of alternate responding in prayer, by the 
minister and people, was first invented by Mamertus, about the 
year 466. To which may be subjoined a crowd of puerile ce- 
remonies, official garments, the frequent elevation of the cross, 
with other childish impious rites, so that Augustin, Epist. 119, 
writing to Januarius, thus remarks, " Ecclesia Dei, inter mul- 
tam paleam, mutaque zizania, constituta." The pestilential cor 
ruptions of the subsequent ages had not however attained their 
unrestrained licentiousness : for the Councils of Africa and 
Chalcedon issued many laws against the incontinency, avarice, 
and secular pursuits of the clergy ; the pomp and negligence of 



I 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE- POPEDOM. 83 

the prelates; the violations of the canons and discipline; thea- 
trical sports, heathenish spectacles, and other festivities ; and 
also against the multiplying superstitions respecting images, 
relics, pilgrimages, abstinence from food, and the monastic 
abuses. Spanheim, Page 472. 

During the fifth century, the ecclesiastical orders became 
more distantly separated into patriarchs, primates or metropoli- 
tans, archbishops, archimandrines or abbots, arch -presbyters, 
arch-deacons, and vicars, all of whom were subject to the des- 
potic usurpations of the Synod, whose frequent unholy and anti- 
christian decisions were enforced by the civil authority. That 
combined ecclesiastical and imperial supremacy was admitted 
also by the Roman Prelates. Boniface, Epist. 1, to the Empe- 
ror Honorius, says, " In humanis rebus divinse cultor reli- 
gionis proesidias." Celestine, Epist. 12, writes to Theodosius ; 
*' Dum universali ecclesise consuleret, omnibus animarum 
suarum salutem reddidisse." Leo. I., in his Epist. 7, to Theo- 
dosius, remarks, that he rejoiced because in that Emperor, " non, 
solum regium et sacerdotalem animum inesse, quod piissimam 
solicitudinem Christian se religion is haberet." 

Notwithstanding those acknowledgments, the pomp and inso- 
lence of the Roman Prelate had become altogether intolerable. 
Ammianus Marcel linus, Lib. 27, narrates, *' eorum convivia re- 
gales mensas superarent." One of the Pagan Consuls sarcas- 
tically observed to Damasus ; '* Facite, me urbis Romanas Epis- 
copum, et ero protinus Christianas." 

The acknowledged subjection of the episcopal order, from 
the Prelates of Rome and Constantinople to the meanest eccle- 
siastic, is manifest from the fact, that the Emperor not only con- 
vocated all the great Councils and Synods, but that he also 
presided over their deliberations by the civil officer to whom his 
authority as moderator was confided. After the same form, but 
with more direct power, as the British monarch, by his delegate, 
even now is moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly 
of Scotland, 

At the great Council of Chalcedon, which was convened bj 



84 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

Marcian in the year 450, a decree was enacted, which utterl]^! 
subverts all the pretended claims of the Roman Prelate to Poiv-i 
tifical supremacy. The twenty-eighth canon of that assembly- 
decided, that the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople possessed • 
<f T« laa ngsaSsia,'^ sequalia privilegia, equal privileges of honor- 
and dignity ; and to the Eastern Prelate was assigned a much 
larger extent of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. That act constituted^ 
the source, whence flowed all the subsequent collisions between > 
those twin sons of their anti-christian mother ; and the final se'-^ 
verance of their different Patriarchates into two irreconcileable 
communities. Their enmity was aggravated by a subsequent 
imperial edict concerning the Primacy of Constantinople, which> 
declar d that it was the head of all churches. 

One mandate issued by the Emperors Valentinian and Theo-^ 
dosius, Cod. Lib. 1, demonstrates not only the progress, but the- 
extreme silliness of the superstitions which were then general. 
It regards the sign of the cross : " Ne quis signum Salvatoris^- 
cruets, vel in solo, vel in silice, vel in marmoribus humi positij^^ 
insculpere, vel pingere tentaret." 

To that century may also be attributed many of those legends'' 
and false miracles, that afterwards formed the basis upon which 
was erected the whole system of Babylonish frauds, impostures;^ 
" signs, lying wonders, and strong delusion." ^^ 

Century VL The superstitions which already have beeti^ 
enumerated became more diffused and uniformly practised as' 
the religious gloom increased, and as the usurpations of the* 
Roman Prelate became confirmed by time. Nevertheless, upon 
all the principal themes of Christian theology, the churches in' 
th:^: sixth century remained ignorant of Popery, as it was after- 
wards so direfully developed. 

In reference to the canon, sufficiency, and reading of the 
Scriptures, Gregory, the boasted Roman Pope and saint, was of 
the same opinion as modern Protestants. In his Morals, Lib. 18, 
Chapter 14, he thus contrasts true believers and heretics. Of the 
latter he says, " Ea proferre quae profecto in sacrorum librorum' 
paginis, non tenentur," and then adds ; " Coeterum, omne quod 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM, 85 

loquimur, ad divinae authoritatis fundamentum revocandum." 
In his Epist. 40, Book 4, he denominates the Sacred Scriptures, 
** the Epistles of God to men," *' nee sine crimine eas ardenter 
legere ab tis negligi ; nor can any person neglect studiously to 
peruse them without crime." 

The same Roman Prelate Gregory never restricted the true 
Church to the external communion of men. Of the infallibility 
of the Church or of its ministers, he was also totally ignorant; 
for in his first Dialogue he acknowledges, that he might be de- 
ceived and be led into error. He was equally clear in repre- 
hending those superstitions which are derogatory to the worship 
of God — and while he was so infatuated as to allow of the in- 
troduction of pictures and images into the churches, as means 
of instruction, yet he emphatically condemned all those who paid 
them the smallest respect. 

Errors also were extended, both in theory and observance. 
Prayers were directed to saints, that they would intercede with 
God. Buildings were dedicated and feasts appointed in mem- 
ory of those saints. Relics were increasingly honored. Pur- 
gatory was openly taught. The absolute necessity of baptism 
was strictly enforced. 

But the corrupt ritual tended more and more to idolatry. 
Edifices were named after Mary, Anne, Peter, Paul, John, &c., 
and the temples which the Pagans had devoted to the honor of 
Venus, Apollo, Mars, and their other gods and goddesses, were 
devoted to the saints, Baronius himself, the Popish annalist 
confesses, that in the year 607, Boniface requested the permis- 
sion of Phocas to transform the Pantheon into a temple for the 
worship of Mary, the Mother of God, and of all saints. As a 
natural consequence, feasts ; processions ; litanies to angels, the 
Virgin, (fee, to obtain their intercession ; consecrations ; sacer- 
dotal garments ; masses over the bodies of the dead, for Gregory 
commands, '* ut supra Petri et Pauli corpora missa celebraretur ;" 
splendidly adorned altars ; penal satisfactions ; exorcisms ; and 
superstitious fasts, were generally adopted. Notwithstanding, 

8 



88 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

the ancient Britons and Scotch, with great multitudes in France 
and Spain, sternly rejected those anti-christian corruptions. 

To the sixth century, however, must be imputed some novel- 
ties, for it was a period fertile in folly. The character of the 
Lord's supper became so obscured, that it was generally deemed 
to be a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead ; and 
upon that anti-christian fiction was erected afterv\^ards a very 
large proportion of the Romish heresies. 

Indulgences, in the Popish acceptation of the term, seem to 
have been first announced by Gregory I., who also enjoined the 
carrying about of the picture of the Virgin Mary at processionsi 
and the burning of candles and tapers in the daytime, before 
the idolatrous altars. 

In the year 529 arose the regular orders of monks, who ra- 
pidly filled all "the horns of the beast;" and attained wealth, 
honors, and power, not less immense than mischievous. To the 
Benedictine monasteries, which were the primitive confederacies 
of European friars, were speedily appended female convents, not 
for instruction and temporary seclusion only, but for an unchang- 
ing abode. Girls fled from their parents at an early age; and 
women abandoned their husbands, purloined the domestic pro- 
perty, and transferred it to the nunnery. Whence those monas- 
teries soon were the curse of the nations. They are described 
by Gregory Turonens, Books 9 and 10; *' Monasteria officinoe 
nefandarum artium, rearum asyla, hereditatum voragines, patri- 
monium gurgites, nee remedia libidinum sed fomenta, ac custo- 
dioD vi perfringendoe." A more correct delineation of male and 
female convents, it would scarcely be possible to trace in any 
language. 

During the latter part of the sixth century, was illustrated the 
immediate prelude to the evolution of the Pontificate. A prior 
measure had removed the grand obstacle to the ecclesiastical 
ascendency. The Emperor Justinian, in the year 536, issued 
a decree, which exempted the ecclesiastics from the civil juris- 
diction ; by which act, the inferior servants of the churches be- 
came mere vassals of their superiors, who were thus legalized 



ORIGIN AND PROaRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 87 

" lords over God's heritage." It must, however, be particularly 
noticed, that notwithstanding the pernicious immunity thus 
granted by Justinian to the various ecclesiastics, no direct tem- 
poral authority was then possessed by the episcopal dignitaries. 
The supreme power and right of the Emperors to govern and 
dispose of all the affairs of the churches in their external ad- 
ministration were universally conceded without any restriction. 
This fact is fully attested by Gratian, Dist. 54, Cap. " Legem ;" 
Caus. 2, Quest. 1, Cap. ^^ Nemo Episcopus ;^^ Caus. 24, Quest 
3, Cap. '' De illicit a:' 

It is also evident, that the privileges which were afterwards 
claimed under the generic term, Pontifical rights, were not ar- 
rogated by the Roman Prelate in the sixth century. At that 
period, there is no vestige in authentic history of the Papal an- 
nates ; investiture of bishops ; the oath of fidelity to the Court 
of Rome ; Popish legates and nuncios ; presidency in all 
councils; the Pontifical infallibility ; Papal dispensations ; the 
treasury of indulgences ; and the prerogative to beatify or 
canonize. 

The inferiority of the Roman hierarch to the Emperor and 
the other civil potentates was also frequently exemplified. John, 
the Roman Prelate, was sent by Theodoric, one of the Gothic 
kings, to Justinian on public affairs as a mediator. Agapetus 
and Vigilius, also, were despatched on different occasions as 
ambassadors between the ruling sovereigns. The peculiar titles 
of the subsequent Pontiffs were then unknown. Synods were 
invariably collected by the authority of the Emperor, or of the 
Kings, who had divided the Western empire into the ten king- 
doms of the beast. They also appointed the persons who 
should preside over the deliberations of all those councils, as is 
verified by that of Constantinople, which was called by the 
Emperor. The Roman Synods were summoned by Theodoric, 
In Spain and France, the Barbarian Monarchs alone invited 
the members, and regulated their proceedings. To which 
another important circumstance may be added, that the Roman 
Prelate was then elected by the other ministers and people ; and 



88 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

that their appointment was void unless it was confirmed by the 
Emperor. The Cardinals, as ecclesiastical princes, and sole 
electors of the Pontiff^ in that age were not in existence. 

Every obstruction, however, to the Papal supremacy was 
gradually removed. The irruptions of the various tribes from 
Northern Europe exterminated the jurisdiction of Constantine's 
successors throughout all Europe west of Greece; and the 
most remarkable and unexpected result of their conquests was 
this that the ignorant and barbarous idolaters, instead of forcing 
the people whom they had subjugated to perform their Druidical 
ceremonies, and to practice their licentious and sanguinary 
orgies, nominally united themselves with the Christian Church; 
commingled their paganism with the adulterated Christianity 
which was then prevalent ; and thus infected the Western 
churches with that corruption which ever since has been an 
incurable malady. 

To preserve their own conquests, the uncivilized Gothic and 
Vandal chiefs perceived, that the most effectual method would 
be to enlarge the despotism over their votaries which the Roman 
Prelates possessed ; and they therefore transferred to them a 
similar predominance and veneration, which the arch- Druids of 
their own idolatry had always retained. That which letted thus 
was taken away. 2 Thessalonians 2 : 7. 

Hence, at nearly the latter end of the sixth century, amid the 
unceasing strife which the Prelates of Rome and Constantinople 
prolonged for the entire supremacy over all the nominal Chris- 
tian disciples, John, the Patriarch of the East, claimed and 
assumed the title of Universal Bishop. Gregory of Rome de- 
nounced that measure as an intolerable usurpation. He called 
his fellow-hierarch in his fourth Book, Epistles 33, 34, 38, and 
in his sixth Book, Epistles 4, 24, 30, 32, *' Superbum, novum, 
blasphemum, profanum, diabolicum, stultum, frivolum, anti- 
christianum, precursorem Antichristi," &.c. He expostulated 
with Mauritius, the Emperor, for permitting John to assume 
that " insolent title," in the following language. '* Where is 
that Antichrist," said Gregory, •* who shall challenge to himself 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 89 

the title of Universal Bishop ? He is near and at the door. By 
this pride, he shows that the times of Antichrist are approach- 
ing. I confidently assert, that whosoever calls himself the 
Universal Bishop is the forerunner of Antichrist." Notwith- 
standing this condemnation of the Pontifical arrogance ; through 
the atrocious murder of the Emperor Mauritius and his family 
by Phocas, which, if not primarily instigated by Gregory, was 
eulogized by him with the most extravagant panegyric, the 
way was opened for the complete triumph of the episcopal ar- 
rogance, and the permanent establishment of " the mystery of 
iniquity." Gregory, to show his dislike of his brother John, 
with the most artful and consummate hypocrisy, assumed the 
name, *' Servus servorum Dei, Servant of the servants of God ;" 
and, as if to continue an unspeakably scandalous burlesque of 
all integrity and decorum, that epithet has been retained as part 
of the Pope's titular dignity, even when he has issued his direst . 
lordly anathemas and his most bloodthirsty fulminations against 
the disciples of Jesus. Within four years after Gregory had 
thus denounced the person who should assume the title of Uni- 
versal Bishop as the very diabolical Antichrist, the murderer 
Phocas, who had usurped the imperial authority upon the butch- 
ery of Mauritius and his descendants, transferred that title to 
Boniface ; who may correctly be pronounced the first Pope. 

Cyriacus, Patriarch of Constantinople, at the beginning of the 
seventh century, condemned the murder of Mauritius. To humble 
him for his integrity, and to gratify Boniface, who approved of 
that nefarious act, Phocas therefore commanded that the Con- 
stantinopolitan Prelate should no longer assume the title of 
Universal Bishop, but that it should belong only to the Roman 
Pontiff That was the open revelation of " the Man of Sin, and 
Son of Perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all 
that is called God, and that is worshipped; so that he, as God, 
sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." 
2 Thessalonians 2 : 3, 4. 

Century VII. VIII. From the period when the eccle- 
siastical supremacy was declared by the Constantinopolitan 

8* 



&0 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOUf. 

Emperor to inhere in the Roman hierarch, and which usurpa- 
tion was tacitly or actually admitted by the Barbarian kings, 
who had subdivided Western Europe, the mental darkness and 
ecclesiastical vassalage increased with dreadful alacrity through- 
out nominal Christendom. As a natural consequence, the ido- 
latries and corruptions of the inhabitants proportionably aug- 
mented. The tares which during five hundred years the 
enemy had been sowing, extirpated the wheat ; and the simpli- 
city of evangelical doctrine, the spirituality of Scriptural wor- 
ship, and the purity of Christian morals, were irrecoverably 
lost. It is not possible precisely to fix the epoch when the 
grand prophetical revolution of 1260 years commenced but it 
appears obvious that it must be limited to some part of the 
seventh century. The Eastern Antichrist appeared in the per- 
son of the Arabian Impostor, and his date is the year of the 
Hegira, 622 ; while the prophesying of the primitive witnesses 
was first heard about the period when the Papal authority was 
almost universally acquiesced in by all the ten kingdoms of the 
beast. 

Those superstitions which had formerly been invented be- 
came obligatory ; and the following additions consolidated the 
prior iniquities. Pope Boniface IV., the immediate successor 
of that " Man of Sin and Son of Perdition" who had been the 
accessary of Phocas in the murder of the Emperor Mauritius 
and who proudly wore the contradictory titles of " Servant of 
servants, Universal Bishop, and Supreme Head of the Church,'' 
opened the Pantheon at Rome ; dedicated that temple of idolatry 
and its remaining statues to the Virgin Mary and all saints : 
and appointed the commemorative festival of that anti-christian 
abomination to be annually celebrated on the first day of No- 
vember. By Pope Boniface V., in 618, the invocation of saints 
was incorporated with the public liturgies. About 666, the 
idolatrous rites were commanded to be performed every where 
in the Latin language ; which naturally produced the oblitera- 
tion of the Holy Scriptures, as the common people could not 
learn to read, and did not understand that tongue. They were 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 91 

also taught to believe, that the sight of the ceremonial mum- 
mery, and a compliance with the forms which were instituted 
respecting the signing of the cross, the genuflections, the bows, 
and the responses, were all that was essential for them to 
perform. 

One of the most decisive facts connected with the period of 
the 1260 years is this — ^that after the full display of the Ponti- 
fical arrogance, both in the anti-christian titles, and in the un- 
hallowed exercise of his diabolical power, the witnesses began 
to testify against the system of Popery, in the full accomplish- 
ment of the prophecies respecting the manifestation of the 
modern mystical Babylon. / 

The grand controversy, however, at the period when the beast >;. 
was attaining his ecclesiastical supremacy and his temporal 
sovereignty, during the seventh and eighth centuries, was that 
respecting the worship of images. Agobard, de Imaginibus, 
Cap. 32, thus writes : " NuUus Antiquorum Catholicorum 
unquam eas colendas vel adorandas fore existimavit." The 
first of the Roman Pontiffs to whom the servile adulation was 
paid of kissing his foot, for the Emperor Justinian debased him- 
self to perform that ungodly act, was Pope Constantino; who, in 
713, kindled the flame respecting image-worship, by issuing an 
edict, in which he pronounced those accursed, *' Sanctis imagini- 
bus veneration em constitutam ab ecclesia, qui negarent illam 
ipsam." The Emperor Leo III., in -726, promulged a decree, 
that the worship of images should be abrogated, and that they 
should not be tolerated in the churches. A wide-spread insur- 
rection, which was instigated chiefly by those two furious 
Roman Pontiffs, Gregory 11. and Gregory III., ensued. Gre- 
gory II. excommunicated Leo ; who, in retaliation, destroyed 
all the images at Constantinople, and removed from ecclesiasti- 
cal and civil ofiices the image-worshippers. The two parties 
soon became known by those famous titles which so often occur 
in the history of the Popedom. They who adored the images 
were denominated Iconoduli or Iconolatrce; and those who op- 
posed that idolatry, and destroyed the instruments of it, were 



92 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

named Iconomachi or Iconolastce. That controversy eventually 
occasioned the dismemberment of Italy from the Eastern em- 
pire. Constantino succeeded his father Leo in the imperial 
throne; and in 754, summoned a Council at Constantinople, 
which body condemned the worship and use of images. He 
was followed by his son Leo IV., who exhibited the same un- 
conquerable aversion to the Papal idolatry as his immediate 
predecessors. But in 780, the Empress Irene poisoned her 
husband Leo, and speedily after collected a Council at Nice, in 
alliance with the Roman Pontiff, Adrian I., a man equally igno- 
rant and corrupt; through whose conjoined influence, all the 
laws of the preceding Emperors were annulled ; the decrees of 
the Constantinopolitan Council were reversed ; image-worship 
was restored ; and the severest punishments were awarded 
against all persons who held that God alone was to be adored. 
Irene also, first made blind and afterwards killed her own son 
in the most horrible manner, dreading lest he should punish her 
for the death of his father. Yet those murders of her husband 
and son, because they were perpetrated in defence of the Romish 
iniquities, the Popes sanctioned ; and Baronius defends and 
eulogizes them. It is truly remarkable, that almost all the 
principal heresies by which the Pontifical authority was conso- 
lidated, were accompanied and sustained by some of the most 
atrocious crimes which are recorded in the annals of human 
turpitude. 

The title of Universal Bishop was obtained through the mas- 
sacre of the Emperor Mauritius and his adherents. Image- 
worship, with all the power and pomp which it added to the 
Roman Pontificate, was the result of general rebellion, and the 
murder of two Emperors, by the wife of the first and the 
mother of the second. The acquisition of the dominions in 
Italy, by which the Pope became a temporal sovereign, was the 
result of Pepin's donation ; w^ho gave to Pope Zachary the pro- 
vince of Lombardy, as a reward to the Pontiff] for assisting' 
Pepin in dethroning Childeric, King of France, and destroying 
his family. Thus treason, slaughter, and the most unnatural 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 93 

domestic butchery, were the grand principles upon which the 
Popedom is founded. 

Notwithstanding all those outrages upon decorum and Chris- 
tianity, Charlemagne, who had become Emperor of the West, 
maintained in a book called Capitularis, and which was pub- 
lished in his name, that image-worship was most offensive and 
unspeakably dishonorable to God. To sanction his opposition 
to image- worship, which had been appointed by the Council of 
Nice, Charlemagne, in 794, summoned a council of 300 prelates 
to meet at Frankfort, by whom the adoration of images was 
unanimously condemned. Charlemagne proved by Scripture and 
antiquity, that the Council of Nice were heretical blasphemers. 
He condemned in the most pungent language and with the bit- 
terest denunciations, '* omninodam, et omnibus modis, imagi- 
num adorationem, 'servitutem, venerationem, observation em, 
cultum, inflexionem collis, capitis, magis genuum, oblationes 
thuris, luminarium," &c. Thus the Council of Frankfort 
charged the Roman Pontiff with error and impiety. Notwith- 
standing, image-worship was decreed and established. The 
necessary result was the introduction of the canonizing of 
saints ; and all who would not unite in that idolatry were excom- 
municated, and persecuted even to death. 

Century IX., X. The period which elapsed from about the 
year 800 to 1000, is infamous in the annals of the Popedom, 
for the universal ignorance, impiety, and wickedness, which 
characterize the ninth and tenth centuries. Bellarmin de Rom. 
Pontif, Lib. 4, Cap. 12, writes: "Seculo hoc nullum extitit in- 
doctius, aut infelicius." Baronius corroborates the opinion in 
his annals, for he assures us : *' Intrusi in cathedram Petri, 
solium Christi, homines monstrosi, vita turpissima, usquequaque 
foedissimi." So that "there might have been seen in the 
temple, the abomination of desolation." 

The principal peculiarities of the ninth and tenth centuries 
are discernible in the forgeries of the Decretal Epistles, which 
were pretended to have been delivered by the early Pontiffs. 
To enhance the Pope^s temporal power a deed was framed, 



94 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

which it was said had been granted by Constantine in the fourth 
century, by which he had made a donation of Rome and a large 
part of Italy to Pope Sylvester and his successors, as their tem- 
poral inheritance. Baronius proved, that the deed was forged 
several hundred years after the death of Constantine, by a monk 
called Balsamon, expressly to sustain inordinate usurpations of 
the Roman Pontiff 

The corporeal presence of Christ in the Eucharist was first 
announced about the beginning of the tenth century; and the 
mummery of naming bells with the same superstitious ceremo- 
nies that are used in the exorcism of mankind, also was intro- 
duced. To which was added the feast of all souls, or the day of 
general delivery of souls from the prison of purgatory. 

The Popedom itself was filled with schisms and contentions 
during nearly one hundred and fifty years ; at which time the 
profoundest ignorance begloomed the nations, and the most ne- 
farious wickedness was unrestrained. Rome itself was exactly 
described by the Apostle John, Revelation 18 : 2, as "the habi- 
tation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of 
every unclean and hateful bird." 

To that period belongs the unique fact in the Papal history, 
the predominance of a woman as Pope ; who, under the name 
of John VIII., was honored as the Vicar of Christ, about the 
years 855 and 856. That narrative was neither disputed nor 
denied until afier the Reformation. A lewd woman was elected 
Pope; she was delivered of a child in public, amid one of the 
idolatrous processions ; and she died almost instantly. Those are 
facts attested by fifty ancient Papal writers. Theodoric Niemius 
avers, that a statue was erected near the spot, between the Coli- 
seum and the temple, for the mass called Saint Clement's. Pla- 
tina testifies to the sella perforata. The Greek historians of 
the ninth century verify that anomalous fact, which extirpates 
all the pretensions of the Roman hierarchy, both to apostolicity 
and sanctity. But the most convincing evidence of the narra- 
tive occurs in the history of the Council of Constance. The 
inquisitors of that treacherous assembly alleged against John 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 95 

Huss, that he denied the inherent attributes ordinarily ascribed 
to the office of Pope, and that if he or any subordinate eccle- 
siastic was in deadly sin, he was in no sense a genuine officer 
of the Church. Huss admitted the truth of the charge ; defended 
the principles which it involves ; and justified his hypothesis by 
the following words : " It is in the power and hands of wicked 
electors," the cardinals, " to choose a woman into that eccle- 
siastical office, as appears by the election of Agnes, who was 
called John, who occupied the Pope's place and dignity more 
than two years." Doctrines controverted between Papists and 
Protestants, Page 21. It is totally incredible that the Council 
of Constance w^ould have permitted such a remark to pass 
uncondemned, if they had not known that the martyr pos- 
sessed ample proof to substantiate his pungent sarcasm. 

That there was a terrifying increase of corruption during the 
ninth and tenth centuries, in doctrine, ceremonies, discipline, and 
morals, throughout all the Papal dominions, is a fact whiph the 
Roman annalists admit ; and its unspeakable inordinacy they 
describe in the most revolting style. 

Traditions most contradictory to the apostolic precepts were 
promulged and enjoined. The Pope's universal supremacy; 
image-worship ; false miracles ; the corporeal presence of 
Christ in the Eucharist ; the saving efficacy of the cross and 
relics ; invocation of saints ; worship of the Mother of God ; 
purgatory ; masses for the dead ; the holiness of festivals ; the 
merits of monachism ; the necessity of celibacy ; and the pro- 
hibition of marriage to the sixth degree of consanguinity, with 
newly-arranged spiritual relationships ; all of which were con- 
trived as so many methods to obtain money from the wretched 
creatures who were chained in their gloomy vassalage. The 
adoration of images and relics; the pretended discovery and 
translation of the bodies, or parts of them, which were reported 
to be the remains of prophets, apostles, evangelists, and mar- 
tyrs ; and festivals of all kinds continually recurring, con- 
stituted the grand external features of the debased nations who 
bowed to- the Pontifical sceptre. 



98r ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

The extreme iniquity which then was universal among all 
orders of the European people, from the Pope and Monarch 
down to the meanest vassal, the Capitularies, Lib. 1, the Acts 
of Councils, and all the chronicles of those centuries, distinctly 
unfold. Even the temporal monarchs could not tolerate the 
enormous flagitiousness of the popes, cardinals, prelates, abbots, 
and monks, with nuns of every order. " Monachis omnium malo- 
rumfabris." Hist. Imag., Cap. 8. Mezeroeus Hist., Sec. 9. Tom. 
1, Page 651, thus forcibly writes: " Divina ultione Normanos, 
gentem ad omnem barbariem ac soevitiam compositam, qui suis 
irruptionibus meritissima supplicia de corruptissimis nebuloni- 
bus sumerent." 

The universal ignorance was equal to the wickedness. Ba- 
ronius, An. 902, remarks : ** Q,ui sciret tantum grammaticum 
isto seculo rudi, doctum habitum esse." To which may aptly 
be superadded the statement of Baluzius. Capitular., Tom. 1 : 
" Modo lectionibus et cantu defungi possent presbyteri, aut com- 
putum scirent, vel psalteriura, proeter symbolum et orationem 
dominicam, ad ministeriumhabiles censebantur." 

As the latter part of the tenth century was the period when 
the Papacy developed its genuine attributes in reference to its 
peculiar distinctive characteristics; and which qualities it re- 
tained almost unaltered until the period of the Reformation, 
except as they were modified by the temporal changes and com- 
motions and wars of the different nations ; some additional facts 
are introduced, that the genuine lineaments of the " Mother of 
Harlots and abominations of the earth," Revelation 17 : 5, may 
accurately be comprehended. 

Baronius describes the infamy of all orders of the Roman 
hierarchy in the most expressive and powerful terms. An. 912, 
" Nihil tarn naturae insitum sit, quam unumquemque sibi similem 
generare." Alredus, an abbot. Cap. 2, says: *' Fuisse clerico- 
rum domos prostibula meretricum, conciliabulum histrionum, 
ubi aleoe, saltus, cantus, patrimonia regum, clermosynoe princi- 
pum proiligarentur, imo pretiosi sanguiis pretium, et alia infan- 
da." Sabellicus, Euneade 9, Lib. 1, thus characterizes that 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 97 

period of European society ; " Per id tempus non salubria in 
stituta, non Templorum refectiones, non ulla pietatis exempla, 
Hon liberalium artium assectationes, sed stupor et amentia, obli- 
vioque morum invaserat hominum animos." To which may be 
conjoined the summary of Baronius, An. 980 ; '* Ordinem 
clericalem plurimum ea tempestate fuisse corruptum, canonicos 
cum presbyteris voluptatibus carnis plus aequo inservisse." 

The profound ignorance of all orders of men was exactly 
parallel with their infamous turpitude. A priest or monk who 
could even read was a Doctor ; and a man who could write his 
name was a prodigy ; but a person who could forge a manu- 
script of lying legends was a saint. 

Of the monks and nuns, the following character is given by 
Baronius, An. 942 : " Vix institutoe religionis apparuisse vestigia, 
in prcestantioribus monasteriis, radicem malorum, malam mona- 
chorum novercam, proprietatum concupiscentiara." 

Idolatry and superstition had almost attained their rankest 
and most criminal monstrosity. They were exemplified in the 
unceasing canonization of saints ; the impiety attached to the 
system of discovering, inventing, and worshipping relics ; the 
excessive veneration and confidence towards images, statues, and 
pictures ; Hagiolatry, or the worship and intercession of saints, 
to the total exclusion of all remembrance of Jehovah, and the 
gracious Redeemer ; and especially that Mariolatry, which 
exalted the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven, and made her 
the chief and generally the sole object of superstitious trust and 
idolatrous honor. 

Sigonius, An. 985, affirms, according to the legends, that in 
the wars with the Saracens, the Apostles Peter and Paul were . 
seen engaged in battle on the part of the nominal Christians. 
Wolfgang, Nicon, Simeon Metaphrastes, and the Byzantine his- 
torians, unite in ascribing to the Virgin Mother of God the 
most horridly blasphemous eulogies, invocation, and worship ; 
respecting her mercy, assistance, protection, health, salvation, 
and every other blessing. Greeks and Latins all agreed to 
ascribe to her the incommunicable attributes of the most high 

9 



98 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

God, and the offices, merits, and work of Christ, the only Me- 
diator, One extract will develop that astounding wickedness. 
They ascribed to the Mother of God, and even to her " Zonsa, 
Vesti, fasciis, et palliolo, top ayiaufxov, ji]v qoicnv, top ilaa/itopy 
r7]v (jQ}Tr]Qiocv , TTjv ^oTjOsiav y jLii] ;^Qi]^ovcrav jivog STegov ngog Oeov 
fisanovQ ovdsvog crco^ofzsvov si /ui] dia avitjg, Sanctificationem, 
robur, propitiationem, salutem, auxilium, quod alium necessa- 
rium habeat Mediatorem, apud Deum, ut nullus nisi per earn 
salutem consequatur." 

Of the festivals, the assumption and conception of the Virgin 
Mary excelled all the others in magnificence and superstition. 
The feast of all souls was instituted according to Polydore Vir- 
gil, Lib. 6, Cap. 10, from the following cause. One of the 
impostor monks pretended, that he was near Mount Etna in 
Sicily, where he saw the flames vomited forth through the open 
door of hell, in which the souls of the reprobates were suffering 
torment for their sins ; and that he heard the devils wailing 
most hideously, " plangentium quod animge damnatorum eripe- 
rentur de manibus eorum, per orationes Cluniaeensium orantium 
indefesse pro defunctorum requie.^' 

To Pope John XIII. appertains the stigma of introducing the 
baptism of bells ; that those machines might thereby be rendered 
efficacious to drive away the devil, quell tempests, increase faith 
and love, and strengthen the dying. The following inscription 
was affixed to the consecrated bells, and it plainly displays all 
the magnitude of the superstition which that impious mummery 
still comprehends. 

*' Colo verum Deum ; plebum voco ; et coflgrego Clerum ; 

Divos adoro ; festa do ceo ; defunctos ploro ; 

Pestem, dasmonesque fugo." 

The ordeals of fire and water originated in the same priestly 
frauds, and were submitted to through popular ignorance. In 
every case, that scheme was made subservient to the increase of 
the power and wealth of the priesthood, and to gratify their 
revengeful malignity. 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 99 

Papal usurpations during that period continually augmented ; 
until one of the worst of that race of sinners who ever filled the 
Papal throne, Pope John XIII., decreed: " Papam omnes 
judicam, a nemini judicari." He also arrogated to himself, as 
Christ's vicar, supreme power over the Church universal; and 
claimed rightful inherent authority in the Pontificate to dethrone 
monarchs, grant kingdoms, translate Emperors and empires, and 
to excommunicate all civil potentates as his inferiors, equally 
with his acknowledged subordinate ecclesiastics. The whole of 
that tremendous power does not seem however to have been 
universally admitted, and to have been exercised without con- 
trol, until the triumph of Pope Gregory VII. over all the 
prostrated monarchs of the ten kingdoms of the beast. Concil., 
Tom. 9. 

The impure law of priestly celibacy was enforced by every 
possible delusion. Not only Pontifical authority, but pretended 
supernatural attestations, were adduced to promote that strong 
hold of "themystery of iniquity." Baronius, and Concil., Tom. 
9, upon the British annals, assure us, among other similar 
examples, that Dunstan and his fellow-craftsmen carried the law 
of celibacy in England by making hollow crosses, statues, and 
images, sufficiently large to contain a monk. At the Abbey in 
Winchester, a council was held in 969, 970, expressly to nul- 
lify all the marriages of priests, and to expel from their eccle- 
siastical offices every man who would not abandon his wife and 
children. That the common people might be induced to submit 
to a regulation which thus transformed the wife and daughters 
of every Papist into victims for the priests' sensuality, a large 
cross or image of a crucifix was elevated on high. After some 
debate, that arch-hierarch Dunstan, with all mock gravity, ap- 
pealed to the image, which spoke in a human voice, and pro- 
nounced the marriage of priests the most heinous crime which 
they could commit ; and thus the decision was announced, as if 
it had been declared by Jesus himself when suspended on the 
cross. The circumstance related of Cardinal Crema, is an edi- 
fying comment upon the above proceedings of the Roman 



fMB ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

Council. So powerful was the opposition to the unmarried 
life of the Popish priests, on account of their inordinate disso- 
luteness, and the discord and filthiness which they diffused 
throughout domestic society, that the English nation continued 
to resist all the machinations of the ecclesiastics to involve 
the people in the vilest debasement; and many of the priests re- 
tained their wives. Pope Honorus II. therefore sent Cardinal 
Crema to England, in 1125, as his legate, if possible, to issue 
a general divorce between priests and their wives, and to restrict 
all such marriages in future. A convocation was held in Lon- 
don ; and the cardinal delivered a pompous oration, extolling the 
sanctity of the single life of priests, and the unpardonable 
wickedness of their being found in connubial life. That same 
night, after he had thus effused his eloquence in favor of conti- 
nency, he was discovered in a common brothel, sleeping in the 
arms of a prostitute. 

The impious tenet of Transubstantiation also was sanctioned 
by " signs." Monkish impostors attested upon " oath, by their 
vestments," that while the piece of the body of Christ was in 
the hand of the priest, they had watched the blood flow from it 
in drops as out of the veins of a true human body ; and that 
they had seen the bread changed into Christ himself, sitting in 
the form of a little boy upon the altar ! 

Purgatory was likewise established by the promulgation of a 
mass of fictions not less absurd than impious and ruinous to the 
soul ; and the anointing of the sick was advanced into the de- 
ceitful superstition of the extreme unction. 

In short, the cardinal doctrines of Christ and him crucified 
were altogether unknown. Scarcely a vestige of justification by 
faith, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the other essential prin- 
ciples of evangelical theology, can be found throughout the ex- 
isting monuments of those dark and direful ages. The media- 
torial offices and work of the Redeemer were obscured by 
dogmas equally idolatrous and vitiating. The merits, power, 
and propitiation of the Virgin Mother of God, with the grace, 
mercy, and peace of Jehovah, bestov/ed through her alone, were 



ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OP THE POPEDOM. 101 

universally conceded to equal those attributes in the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The virtue of his atonement was rejected for the expia- 
tory sacrifice of the mass. The necessity of the Redeemer's 
precious obedience was excluded by the supposititious merits of 
penance, the monastic life, offerings, pilgrimages, and satisfaction 
for sin according to priestly requirements. The worship of 
God was obliterated by the invocation of saints, images, and 
relics, and the constant and exclusive reference to them for me- 
diation, intercession, and grace. Evangelical pardon of sin 
was banished from remembrance by the necessity of priestly 
absolution. Even the judgment to come was erased from 
human memory, by the fancied ever-present, intervening pur- 
gatory. 

The period which elapsed from the commencement of the 
tenth century, during nearly the ensuing 500 years, has been em- 
phatically and appropriately termed the midnight of the world. 
The grateful remembrances of that doleful period are so few 
and so far between, that were it not for the instructive cautionary 
lessons which they teach, and the corroborative proofs of the 
prophetical Scriptures which they comprise, it w^ould excite 
little regret, if the whole mass of feudalism and imposture, ig- 
norance and crime, priestcraft and monachism, usurpation and 
vassalage, tyranny and slaughter, anguish and diabolism, were 
expunged from the annals of mankind. 

Those ages w^ere like "the darkness over the land of Egypt, 
even darkness which may be felt." In a spiritual sense, the 
people who resided in the '^ ten kingdoms of the beast" saw 
not one another for several centuries. " All the world wondered 
after the beast : and they worshipped the dragon which gave 
power unto the beast; and they worshipped the beast, saying; 
Who is like unto the beast ? Who is able to make war with 
him?" Revelation 13: 3, 4. 

From the year 1000 to the Reformation. It is unne- 
cessary minutely to describe the events which transpired during 
the five hundred years immediately prior to the revolution 
which occurred throughout Europe in the sixteenth century. 

9* 



102 ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF THE POPEDOM. 

All the Papal measures were merely contrivances to confirm 
their nefarious pre-eminence. 

The claims of Hildebrand to godlike power in heaven and 
upon earth — the establishment of the conclave of cardinals — the 
rigorous and efficient injunction of priestly celibacy — the en- 
forcement of a belief in purgatory — the arrogance of the Popes 
in demanding the power of investitures concerning prelates — the 
publication of the canon law, with the decretals, and the bound- 
less monkish forgeries and legends to ratify them — the feigned 
and counterfeit miracles which were constantly promulged — the 
authoritative demand for the plenary belief in transubstantiation 
— ^the crusades — the increasing hordes of friars and nuns — the 
establishment and sale of indulgences, as a commutation for 
sin — the invention of seven sacraments — and, above all, the san- 
guinary, general, and incessant persecutions of the *' Witnesses 
who prophesied in sackcloth," and who protested " with a loud 
voice" against the indescribable abominations of " Babylon the 
great" — all those combined causes produced the full evolution and 
the long predominance of *' the mystery of iniquity." Komish 
tyranny, and the pride, luxury, pomp, uncleanness, and impiety 
of the Papal priests, were consummated. '' The Man of Sin 
and the Son of Perdition" was Lord upon earth. *' The work- 
ing of Satan" was unrestrained; and incarnate diabolism was 
so culminant, that even many of the moral and thoughtful dwel- 
lers in the seat of the beast clamored loudly for a general and 
complete Reformation. 



NOTES. 

Note I. — Walch, in his Compendious History of the Popes, gives a suc- 
cinct view of that " all-deceivableness of unrighteousness," by which 
the Papal power and grandeur attained their acme. 

" The foundation of that formidable structure was the doctrine, that 
the Bishops of Rome, as successors of St. Peter, and vicegerents of 
Christ, have all power both in heaven and earth ; and are in no respect 



NOTES. IM 

subject to any prince. From the time of Innocent III. that became a 
fundamental article, and whoever presumed to contradict it were ac- 
cursed as heretics. 

" The great object of attention was to establish and enlarge the supre- 
macy over the whole Church, in its utmost extent. In order to which a 
power was asserted of making articles of faith ; and great zeal was used 
to subject all ecclesiastical persons immediately to Rome. 

" The Bishops of Rome were not satisfied with depriving princes of the 
right of investiture, and arrogating to themselves the confirmation of 
the newly-elected, but they assumed the disposal of the most profitable 
benefices as the surest means of providing for their creatures, and 
thereby promoting their own advantage. Some of these they usurped 
by the name of reservations ; others by that of provisions, and thereby 
provoked the most bitter complaints, especially in Germany and 
England. 

" Their next attempt was to subject to themselves princes and their king^ 
doms and states. The argument made use of was this : that the splendor 
of their dignity was to the majesty of the emperors and kings, as the 
efiulgence of the sun to the borrowed light of the moon ; and therefore 
they demanded and extorted from crowned heads the most extravagant 
marks of respect and most debasing humiliations. They assumed the 
right of conferring regal dignity, and particularly presumed to consider 
the imperial crown as absolutely at their disposal ; and by the pretenders 
they set up, kindled perpetual confusions in the Roman empire. They 
disposed of entire kingdoms, provinces, and countries ; others they con- 
verted into Papal fiefs, of which the new vassals might easily be de- 
prived under pretence of felony. They excommunicated emperors, 
kings, and princes, on the slightest pretence ; laid their dominions under 
an interdict, and discharged their subjects from the most sacred obliga- 
tion of their oath of fidelity. They stirred up sons to rebellion against 
their fathers, and supported them in their impiety. They interfered in 
the family concerns of princes ; broke the sarrcd band of marriage ; and 
daily invented many other methods of weakening their prerogatives. 

" Among the measures which conduced most effectually to render the 
Pope supreme governor of all Christendom, and to centre the riches of 
this world in the treasury of the Church, the crusades Heserve a prin- 
cipal place, especially after the clergy began to preach them up against 
those unhappy persons called heretics, and their kind protectors. 

" The support of all that usurpation was not a little forwarded by the 
establishment of the inquisition ; the confirmation of Gratian's collection 
of canon-laws ; and the practice of canonization, which was an excellent 
means to secure constancy in the faith of the Romish Church, to enricli 
the Papal treasury, and to extend their power to the disposal even ©f 



104 NOTES. 

celestial crowns. The new religious and military orders assisted like- 
wise to render their patron formidable." 

Amid all that increase of the Papal grandeur, Divine providence ma- 
nifested itself, in raising up very illustrious witnesses to the truth, who 
saw and opposed the intolerable corruptions. The morals of all orders 
of the hierarchy were so inordinately profligate, exclusive of their im-\ 
pious doctrines, pride, av^arice, and ambition, that many of the poets and 
other authors of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, boldly 
and publicly denounced, that the Pope and his subordinate ecclesiastics, 
although many of them are among the Romish saints and demi-gods, 
were the Antichrist revealed in the Apocalypse by the Apostle John. 

Note II. — This narrative of the origin and progress of the Popedom 
may appropriately be closed by a concise exhibition of some of the cardi- 
nal principles which it comprises. A more compendious and instructive 
summary of those momentous truths which the preceding review im- 
parts, cannot probably be found than in a work entitled, " Deylingi Ob- 
servationum Sacrarum, Pars I." That author's sixth exercitatio dis- 
cusses the character of the Papal power : and the novelty of the 
monarchical form of government in the Christian church ; in which 
elaborate examination, he demonstrates that the Pontifical hierarchy is 
contrary to the gospel. 

.- A vast body of erudition, argumentative and historical, is adduced; 
and the eleven succeeding propositions are verified beyond all cavil. 
They constitute a complete polemic battering-ram to subvert the walls of 
that modern spiritual Jericho, the Papacy. 

, " 1. Christ did not institute in his Church any sacred dominion, and 
much less a monarchical government, such as the Roman Prelates dur- 
ing a long period have claimed and usurped. 

. "2. In the beginning, all the ministers of the Church were equal ; and 
bishops before the second century after the birth of Christ were not ex- 
alted above presbyters • nor did they arrogate to themselves any peculiar 
duties or privileges of the sacred office. 

*' 3. Although the government and the jurisdiction of the Church at that 
period were not in bishops alone, but the presbyters and deacons, with the 
whole assembly, participated in the rule and determination of affairs ; yet 
the authority of the Prelates gradually and rapidly obtained a large 
increase. 

. " 4. All bishops then were equal, nor had the Roman bishop or any 
other the least right or precedence over his brethren. 
. "5. In the third century after the Savior, Metropolitans arose ; who 
were placed in the principal city of the province, so that the other prelates 
la tUe same province by degrees became subject to their jurisdiction. 



NOTES. 105 

" 6. Whatever prerogatives of bishops, and distinction of authority 
and power, then were admitted, were derived solely from the dignity of 
the city where they presided. 

*' 7. Although the Metropolitan dignity was supreme after the Council 
of Nice, yet there were three chiefs, the Roman, Alexandrian, and the 
Antiochian, each of whom ruled his own diocess unrestricted, and 
neither of them possessed any right or power more than the others. 

" 8. In the fourth century of the Christian Church, the Roman Pontiff 
was not Patriarch of all Western Europe, much less was he head and 
monarch of the whole Church ; but only a particular Prelate, not supe- 
rior to other Metropolitans, Exarchs, or Primates. 

''9. After the peace granted to the churches by Constantine, the luxury 
and pomp of the bishops greatly increased ; and especially the ambition, 
authority, and power of the Roman Prelate were extended, so that they 
could not be restrained within the limits of the suburban cities ; but by 
various artifices, they continually became more amplified. 

" 10. At length the Roman Prelates, not content with having obtained 
the primacy of order among the other hierarchs, endeavored to es- 
tablish their authority in both divisions of the empire. After long and 
severe strife with the Constantinopolitan Patriarchs, by the parricide of 
Phocas, they obtained the title of Universal Bishop; and extended their 
jurisdiction, but could not grasp domination over all the Church, because 
they were opposed by the authority of emperors and councils. ^ 

" 11. Finally, in the eleventh century after Christ, the power of the 
Roman Pontiff*, by the ferocity of Pope Gregory VII., was carried to its 
utmost extent ; and the nominal Christian Church, through the debase- 
ment of the imperial and royal prerogatives, were forced to submit their 
necks to the tremendous yoke of the despotic court of Rome." 

That " Exercitatio Deylingi" occupies 117 pages; and some idea may 
be formed of its great erudition and research, when it is remembered 
that not less than 150 different authors, polemic and historical, are ad- 
duced as testimonies to illustrate and confirm the above essential hypo- 
theses. He closes his disquisition with this emphatic statement and 
inference. Some of the Papal canons issued by Hildebrand, Pope Grcr 
gory VII., were these : — " All princes should kiss the feet of the Pope. 
The Pope alone is authorized to use imperial insignia. There is 
only one title in the world, that of Pope. To him it belongs to 
dethrone Emperors. His sentence none may oppose, but he alone may 
annul the judgment of all mankind. The Pope cannot be judged by any 
men. The Roman Church never has erred, and never can err. The 
Pope may absolve subjects from their fidelity to wicked governors." — 
BaroniuSj An. 1076, Hildebrand, Epist. 55, ad Laudanenses. Concil. Lab- 
bie. That formerly was, and now is, the doctrine of the Roman cotirt, 



106 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF POPERY. 

as is plainly declared by Baronius, who says : " Istas sententias hactemis 
m ecclesiaB catholicae usu receptas fuisse." 

Whence it is evident, that Hildebrand's doctrine is yet maintained by 
the Papal hierarchy. Some Galilean divines rejected those impieties ; 
but consistent Romanists still contend, that the immense and uncontrolled 
supremacy which was exercised by Hildebrand, as far as it can be assert- 
ed and enforced, remains in all its vigor, and rightfully and legitimately 
appertains to the Roman Pontiff. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OP POPERY. 

The following table contains a concise notice of the chief events which 
occurred in the rise and progress of the Popedom. In connection with 
the previous chapter concerning the Papacy, it is believed, that all the 
prominent events which established and consolidated the Romish hie- 
rarchy are detailed, and the precise periods when they happened are 
specified from the best authorities. Several authentic chronologists were 
accurately examined ; and in a great number of instances, the facts and 
dates have been verified by a recurrence to the original authors, or to 
those compilers who are considered of equal authority. Not only was 
the volume of chronology attached to the ancient universal history ex- 
plored, but the chronological tables at the end of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical 
History were also reviewed. Walch's catalogues of the Papacy were 
fully searched. Spanheim's indices were completely surveyed. The 
new analysis of chronology by William Hales, in four quarto volumes, 
was collated. The voluminous tables at the end of the Papal decretals 
were closely inspected. But the table owes much of its accuracy and mi- 
nuteness to Fox's Acts and Monuments three volumes folio, which is pro- 
bably the most authentic work in existence, except the volume of Divine 
revelation. By a ponderous volume issued more than 200 years ago by 
Henry Isaacson, entitled Sahirni EphemerideSj which is a compendious 
history of the world in every department down to the commencement of 
the seventeenth centary, the whole series of dates and facts have been 
carefully corrected. 

It will be perceived, that some of the Papistical superstitions are impu- 
ted to difierent inventors, and at widely distant periods. In all cases of 
that nature, it may be adjudged, that the more recent period is the true 
time ; and that the prior date is a monkish forgery especially designed 
to give the sanction of antiquity to the "pious fraud ;" except that the 
annalists may have adverted either to the introduction of the heretical 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF POPERY. 107 

notion and the idolatrous customs in different countries, or to their insu- 
lated adoption, and to the subsequent formal and solemn public ratifica- 
tion of the impious observance. 

In almost every particular, the name of the authors, where it is desir- 
able to be known, is given. Many of the chronologists and annalists who 
are quoted by Isaacson, Spanheim, Mosheim, and Hales, are inaccessible 
in this country ; but in a variety of examples the opportunity was afforded 
to recur to their authorities, and in no one instance was the smallest error 
discoverable. 

The principal design in the compilation of the ensuing table was this • 
to furnish a succinct and authentic view of the successive impostures of 
Romanism, from the primitive " working of Satan," until its complete 
evolution in the assumption of Divine titles and the Redeemer's preroga- 
tives and spiritual domination by Boniface and his successors. It is 
necessary to mark the progressive advancement of the Prelatical tyran- 
ny, until it was triumphantly displayed in the triple-crowned Pontiff. 
The continuous augmentation of idolatrous mummery and practical cor- 
ruption Avere necessarily delineated until the Pontificate of Leo X. 

These illustrations of Popery close with the Reformation. With the ex- 
ception of the wickedness which was transacted and cemented at the 
Council of Trent, and the establishment of the order of Jesuits, the 
Popedom has realized no change in its spirit, design, or practice, during 
the last 300 years. It has been modified by the surrounding influence and 
watchfulness of Protestants ; it has lost much of its power to worry and 
destroy ; and in many situations it has wrapped itself up in a gaudy vizor 
or impenetrable concealment ; otherwise it remains identical. No un- 
godly assumption has been authoritatively abandoned. Not one jot or 
tittle of its incurable corruptions has been denied, or reformed, or con- 
demned. Not a particle of its universal supremacy over all people and 
governments has been formally resigned. Not a whisper has ever been 
heard of its surrendering its antiquated demand of uncontrolled jurisdic- 
tion by its infallibility over the conscience. Neither the light shed 
upon it by exploring its arcana, and unfolding its secrets ; nor by the art 
of printing ; nor the enlargement of its nominal domains in the eastern 
and western hemispheres, has meliorated its character, softened its 
spirit, or alleviated its mischievous effects ; as is demonstrated beyond 
all doubt and contradiction, by a reference to the past history and pre- 
sent condition of Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, and Austria, in Europe, 
and to Canada, Mexico, and South America. In short, the idolatrous 
impiety, boundless arrogance, incurable sensuality, and insatiable per- 
secuting blood-thirstiness of the mystical Babylon, remain inseparable in 
all their compound malignity, and unchangeable in all their direful 
abominations. 



t08 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A. D. Rom. Emfv 



65. Nero. 

92. Domitian. 
100. Trajan. 
109. 
123. Adrian. 



129. 

135. 

142. Antonnius. 

144. 
150. 
153. 



154 
157. 

159. 



165. 



167. 
169. 



170. 
172. 
173. 
174, 

17a 
179. 



Events. 



First Persecution of Christians. 

Second Persecution. 

Third Persecution. 

Ignatius martyred. 

Alexander, Bishop of Rome, directed that water should b* 
mingled with wine at the Lord's Supper ; and the Popish 
Annalists also ascribe to him the invention of Holy Water. 
— Platina. Functius. Poly, Virg. Ldb. 5. cap. 9. 

Aristides appealed to Adrian in favor of the Christians. — Eu 



Sixtus, the Roman Bishop, introduced Altars. — Volateraru 

Uospinian. 
Telesphorus, Bishop of Rome, instituted the feast of Lent.^— 

Scaliger in Euseb. Ldb. 4. cap. 5. Nauclerus ChronoL 
Controversy respecting Easter first began. — Onuph. Chraru 
Justin wrote his first apology for the Christians. 

Higinus, the Roman Bishop, instituted the Consecration of 

Churches. 
Godfathers and Godmothers at Baptism also were introduced 

by him. — Functius Hist. Platina. 

The title of Pope first applied to Ministers by Higinus. 

Pius, the Roman Bishop, determined that the Lord's Resur- 
rection should be kept on the Sunday. — Eusebius. Reusner, 

Virgins formally consecrated to the service of the Church.— 
Polyd. Virgil. Ldb. 4. cap. 13. 

Fonts in Churches were appointed by Pius. — Vincent Mat' 
tyrolog. Ldb. 10. cap. 106. 

Fourth Persecution. 

Justin wrote his second apology for Christians ; and was be- 
headed the following year. 

Anicetus of Rome, and Polycarp of Smyrna, agreed, for the 
sake of peace, that the Greek and Latm Christians should 
observe their own day and customs respecting the memo- 
rial of the Savior's Resurrection. Eusebius^ Ldb. 4, cap. 14. 

Polycarp was martyred at Smyrna. 

Anicetus of Rome directed the consecration of Bishops, and 
the shaving of the heads of Priests. — Tom. Condi. Plati- 
na. Lhcnctius. Binius, marked T. C. in Chron. 

Hegesippus wrote an Ecclesiastical History. 

Mehto addressed to the Emperor an apology for the Christians. 

Theophilus of Antioch, and Apolinaris of Hierapolis, were ad- 
vocates for Christianity. 

Consent of Parents required at the Marriage of Christians. — 
T. C. Platina. 

Soter of Rome decreed that no marriage should be lawflil 
without the Priest's benediction, and the father's deUvery 
of the woman to the husband. — T. C. Platina. 

Ireneus of Lyons published his works. 

Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome, denounced the superstitious re- 
fusal to eat meats. — Platina. 

Athenagoras presented to the Emperor his apology for th« 
Christians. 



CHRONOLOOiCAI. TABLE. 



109 



k. D. Rom. Einp. 



l87.Antoninus. 
190.Commodus 

196. Severus. 



197. 



200. 
203. 



205. 

211. Caracalla. 



2! 6. 
219. 
Heliogabalus, 



224. Alexander. 
22a 



231. 

236.Maximinus 

237. 

240. Gordian. 

246. 

249. Philip. 

251. Decius. 
255. Valerian. 
256. 

258. 



ApoUonius defended Christianity in the Roman Senate, and 
was murdered. — Eusebiusy Lib. 1. cap, 19. 

The Feast of Pentecost and the nativity of Christ began to 
be celebrated. — Hospinian ex Nicephor. 

Clemens Alexandrinus published his works. 

The Easter controversy was revived. The Asiatic churcj^s fol- 
lowed the custom of the Apostle John and Polycarp, m cele- 
brating the death of the Redeemer, on the fourteenth day of 
the Moon. The Western Christians referred the festival of 
the Resurrection to the first Lord's day after the full Moon. 
Victor, the Roman Bishop, was so enraged at the Eastern 
disciples, that he was scarcely restrained from fulminating 
his anathema against them. Thus began the Papal Excom- 
munications and Interdicts. Several Councils were held te 
decide that dispute. Eusebius Lib. 5. Cone. Cent, 2. \ 

Tertullian published his apology for the Christians. 

The fifth persecution. 

Zephyrinus of Rome enjoined, that all baptized youth should re- 
ceive the Eucharist, at least once annually. — Damas. Crisp, 

Polycrates opposed the proceedings of Victor. — Eusebius. 

Ireneus martyred. 

Minutius Felix wrote a Dialogue on behalf of Christians, 
against the Jews, 

The Persecution ceased. 

Tertullian, in his book De Penitentia, first mentions Altars. 

Calixtus, Bishop of Rome, appointed the four Embers, or fast- 
ing days, before ordination. He prohibited marriage within 
the fourth degree. Church-yards were instituted by him. — 
Fund. Chron. 

Places of worship for Christians were first erected.-^jK«*e6. 
Lib. 8. cap. 1. 

Urban of Rome appointed, that no man should be a Bishop 
who had not been a Deacon. At that period the Churchos 
began to hold lands and other property for the support of 
the Ministers. — Eunctius. Pet. De Nat. 

Origen began his Octapla edition of the Bible. 

The sixth persecution. 

Gratian imputed many decretals and constitutions to Fabian, 
Bishop of Rome. — T. Cone. 1. 

Two Synods were held; one in Arabia; the other at PhS^* 

delphia. — Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. Crispin. 

Origen wrote against Celsus. 

Controversy respecting the rebaptizing of heretics. — Cyprianf 
Lib. 1. Epist. 12. Lib. 2. Epist. 1. 

The seventh Persecution. 

The eighth Persecution. 

Copes were introduced by Stephen of Rome. — Polvd, Virgm 

Lib. 6. cap. 12. 

A Council was held at Carthage respecting the validity of 
Baptism by Heretics. — T. C. 1. 

Stephen of Rome, and Cyprian of Carthage, were martyred: 
and thus their violent contests were ended. 
10 



no 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A. D. Rmn- Emp. 



259. Valenan. 
271. Aurelian. 

275, * 
284.Dioclesian. 

297. 
/302. 

308. Galerius. 



312. 

313. 

ConBtantine. 
315. 

316. 

317. 



319. 

32a 

324. 
325. 



Paul the Hermit fled from persecution into the wilderness ; 
where he resided until the general peace achieved by Con- 
stantine. From him sprung the monkish orders. — Jerom. 

Felix of Rome instituted the Consecration of Altars. — Pla- 
Una. Sabellicus. 

Porphyry wrote his work against the Christians. 

The ninth Persecution. 

Caius, Bishop of Rome, invented eight ecclesiastical orders. 
1. Ostiarius. 2. Lector. 3. Exorcista. 4. Acoluthus. 5. 
Subdiaconus. 6. Diaconus. 7. Presbyter. 8. Episcopus. — 
Volater. Sab elite, 

MarceUinuSj Bishop of Rome, sacrificed to idols, during the 
time of persecution. He afterwards publicly confessed his 
sm, and was martyred. A. D. 304. 

The tenth persecution. The era of Martyrs. In Egypt alone, 
144,000 were put to death, and 700,000 banished. The my- 
riads of them who suffered for Christ's sake, during the ensu- 
ing ten years, are " a multitude which no man can number." 

Marcellus of Rome appointed fifteen persons to bury the dead, 
and to administer the ordinance of baptism. They were 
called Cardinals^ on account of the extraordinary fortitude 
which was requisite for the discharge of their duties in the 
extremely perilous times of the tenth persecution. The 
name and office were only temporary ; but the title was 
afterwards applied to the principal dignitaries of the Pon- 
tifical court and hierarchy. 

Pamphilus was martyred. 

Melchiades, Bishop of Rome, abrogated all fasting upon Sun- 
days, and the ordinary festivals. 

The decree for the unrestricted exercise of the Christian religion 
in the Roman Empire, was promulged by Constantine. 

Arius began to disseminate his heresy, and was condemned 
by the^Council of Alexandria. 

The ecclesiastical and temporal power was first exercised by 
Constantine, in the condemnation of the Donatists at Milan. 

Silvester, Bishop of Rome, invented the Albe, and the cor- 
poral for the altar. — Uospinian. 

By command of Constantine, Silvester instituted the feast of 
Saint Peter ad \ancula. — PoJyd. Virg. Lib. 6. cap. 8. Other 
annaUsts state that the festival of Peter was not appointed 
until the year 440. — Marc. Sigon. 

Constantine granted many privileges to theChristian churches. 

By the Emperor's authority, wax candles and lamps were 
introduced, and kept burning occasionally in the churches. 

The first prelatical schism at Rome. 

Constantine erected the Vatican and Lateran churches, and 
St. Paul's Church at Rome. 

The controversy was revived in the East respecting the cele- 
bration of Easter. — Puffinus, Lib. 1, cap. 5. Sozomeriy 
Lib. 1. cap. 1-5. 

First general Council of Xice. 

ilelena, the mother of Constantine, found the true Cross of 
Christ ; and also the tM'o other crosses of the thieves, un- 
injured. — Ruffinu^. 

The Nicene creed was adopted.— £tif^66i«« Hist, 



CHKONOLOGICAX TABLE. 



Ill 



.D. 



328. 

Constantine. 
330. 

336. 

346. 

Constantine. 
350. Constans. 

352. 

Constantius. 

355. 
359. 

362. Julian. 



363. 

364. 

Valentinian. 
Valens. 



369. 
375. 

377. 



380. 



Theodosius. 



381. 
383. 



385. 

387. 
39L 



X 



Antony the Monk renewed the recluse life of Paul the Her- 
mit. At that period the Monks lived dispersed and separate. 

Byzantium was rebuilt, and called Constantinople. The Bishop 
of which was denominated a Patriarch. — Jerom. Sigonius. 

Marcus, Bishop of Rome, commanded the Nicene creed to be 
sung after the Gospel. — Functius. 

Constantius enacted a law to aboHsh the Heathen sacrifices, 
and to shut up the Heathen temples. — Cod. Calv. Reusner. 

The feast of the annunciation was first observed. — Hospinian. 
Athanasius prcepar. evangelic. 

Constantius disbanded his Heathen soldiers, and settled them 
in villages ; whence originated the word Pagan, as applied 
to the Gentile Idolaters. — Soa-ates. Calvisius. 

The second schism. 

The supposititious bones of Andrew were translated to Con- * 
stantinople, and his Feast probably instituted. — Hospinian, 

A Persecution was raised against Christians. Juhan re-open- 
ed the Heathen temples ; and also prohibited the instruction 
of children in the Christian religion. — Ruffinus. Socrates, 

Basil and Nazianzen retreated to the vdlderness. 

The dispersed Eastern Monks were collected into companies 
by Basil. They then began to erect Monasteries, and live ac- 
cording to his laws, whence they were calledMonks of Basil. 

The rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem was counteracted 
by many remarkable prodigies. 

Council of Laodicea. 

Marriage during Lent was prohibited. — Ccnc. Laod. Can, 52. 

A sect called Collyridians offered divine honor to the Virgin 
Mary, and sacrificed to her, as Queen of Heaven. 

Third schism. 

The order of Lazarus in Savoy was founded. 

The bones of Andrew were transported from Achaia to Scot- 
land. — HolUnshead. 

The feast of Epiphany was introduced, and the custom of 
parents stancling aside when their children were baptized. — 
Nazianz. Or at. 3. Cent. 4. cap. 6. 

The application of the term Catholic was commenced about 
the accession of Theodosius ; who also pubUshed his law 
against the Arians, and for the observance of Lent. 

Second General Council at Constantinople. 

Flavian of Rome, and Diodore, commanded the singing of 
the Psalms by responses. — Can. 72. Col. Church. 

Ursula and 11,000 virgins, who were transported from England 
to Little Britain, were drowned. — Gildas.Polyd. Virg.Bar, 

Siricius, Bishop of Rome, ordained, that if a clergyman should 
marry a second wife, he should be degraded ; and that no 
minister should have any women in his house but his own 
kindred. — Gratlan Can. 8. 

Anthems were introduced into the churches by Siricius ol 

Rome, or Ambrose. — 72. Col. Church, 
Jerom invented canonical hours for prayer. — Polyd, Vtrg, 
The supposed head of John the Baptist was removed fram 

Cilicia to Constantinople. — Baronius. 



112 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A, D. Rom. £rop. 



394.Theodosius 

395. Honorius. 
397. 



398. 



400. 
402. 
403. 



406. Honorius. 
Theodosius. 
409. 
410. 
412. 
416. 

419. Honorius. 
Constantius. 
427. 

Theodosius. 

Valentinian. 
429. 

431. 

433. 



435. 
438. 

439. 



44a 

445. 

4ie. 



i**-? .iieil /2 -i 



The word Mass adopted. — Augustin de temp, Caasian, lAh* 
3. cap. 7. Crispin. 

Jerom translated his Bible. — Sigeb. Calvisiua. 

The third Council of Carthage was held. They decreed that 
the Eucharist should be administered to none except to those 
who were fasting. — Canon 29. 

AnastasiuSj Bishop of Rome, ordained that persons should 
stand when the Gospel is read. 

Heathen temples and idols were destroyed by the Emperora. 
— Prosper. August, de civitate. 

The Regular Canons were instituted. 

"Right of patronage to churches began in the Council of Nola." 

Innocent, the Prelate at Rome, enjoined that Saturday should 
be kept as a fasting day, because Christ's disciple^ mourned 
and fasted that day for him, while he lay in the sepulchre. — 
JFhinctius. 

The bones of Samuel the prophet were translated to Constan- 
tinople 1460 years after his departure. — Nicep. JLib.l^. cap. 10. 

Lights were used in churches during the day. 

Rome was captured and spoiled by Alaric. 

Pelaghis began to promulge his Heresy. — Sigeb. Baronius, 

The bones of Stephen, Nicodemus, and Gamaliel, were found 
byLucian of Jerusalem. — August. Serm. 51. 

Pelagius andCelestius were condemned in a council atCarthage. 

The fourth schism. 

The two Emperors ordained that no picture of Christ, either 
painted or graven, should be placed near the ground, but in 
some place of eminence. — Cod. Calvisi. 

Nestorius denied the propriety of applying the title, Mother of 
God, to the Virgin Mary. 

Nestorius was condemned by the thhd General Council at 
Ephesus. 

The Feasts of Advent, and Palm- Sunday, and the supersti- 
tion of Ash- Wednesday, were commenced about the year 
430. — Maximus of Turin Homil. 

The code of Theodosius was published. — Prefat. 

Eudocia, the Empress, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and 
built the church which was dedicated to Stephen, and seve- 
ral monasteries. — Evag. Lib. 1. cap. 21, 22. 

Museus collected the lessons and responses for festivals. 

Eudocia carried from Jerusalem to Constantinople the chain 
which the Angel took from Peter in prison, -with other relics, 
which she sent to her daughter at Rome ; in consequence of 
which, Sixtus, the Roman Prelate, instituted the feast of 
Peter ad vincula. — Marc. Sigeb. Hospinian, and others, refer 
the appointment of that feast to Constantine and Silvester, 
in 317 ; and others speak of it as a more recent invention. 

Rogations, or Litanies, were instituted by Leo I., Prelate of 
Rome. Polyd, Virg. Lib. 1. cap. 11. Platina declares that 
they were first appointed in 4b4, by Leo III. 

Hilary was condemned by Leo of Rome for maintaining the 
Uberties of the church. 

The Seven Sleepers awaked, after a slumber of nearly 200 
years. — Sigon. 



CHRONOLOGICAI. TABLE. 



.1^ 



A. D. R<»n. £inp. | 



447.Theodosius 
448. 

451. 
458.Marjoranus 



Leo. 



459. 



461. 



462. Leo. 
Severus. 



464. 

472. Leo. 

Olybrius. 
477. Leo. 

Basilicus, 
Augiistulus. 



487. Zeno. 

488. 

492.Anastasius. 

494. 



50a. 
503. 



505. 

006. 
607. 



The Eutychian Controversy. 

Theodosius, the Emperor, deprived Ireneus of his bjshopric, 

because he was made a prelate after his second marriage. 
The fourth Grand Council at Chalcedon. 
Pauhnus, Bishop of Nola in Campania, invented bells for 
churches. Thence, bells were called Campanse, and Saints* 
bells were named Noise. — Gilbert Cognat. Ilospinian. 
Studius erected a monastery at Constantinople for watching 
monks. They were divided into three companies, who kept 
vigils, and prayed by turns without intermission day and 
night. Those friars were denominated Studitae. — Niceph. 
Paulinus of Nola invented the painting of stories of the Old 
Testament, and of crosses about the walls of the churches. 
The hand of a painter at Constantinople was withered while 
he was making a picture of Christ like to Jupiter. — Cedrenus. 
Hilary of Rome decreed that no unlearned man should be ad- 
mitted into the priesthood ; and also that the Roman Prelate 
should not nominate his successor. — Gratian, Canon. 55. 
Prosper and Platina refer the invention of Rogations to Pau- 
linus of Nola, during this year. 
The second dignity in the nominal church was confirmed by 

the Emperor Leo to the Patriarch of Constantinople. 
The Western Roman Empire was entirely extinguished by 
Odoacer, after the capture of Rome and. Ravenna, by the 
resignation of Augustulus ; which event opened the way for 
the Papal usurpations and ecclesiastical supremacy, ana the 
permanent settlement of the ten horns of the Beast, to 
whom the Dragon "gave his power, and his seat, and great 
authority;" for he who had previously letted was then 
"taken out of the way." — 2 T7iessalonians, 2:7. 
Pehx of Rome instituted the feast of Saint Michael. — Hos- 
pinian. Eccius, however, refers it to the year 390; and 
Horolanus to the year 500. 
The festivals of the Circumcision and John the Baptist were 

appointed. 
Gelasius of Rome decreed that no lame or bUnd persons 

should be admitted as priests. 
A council was held at Rome, at which the Apocryphal books 
were distinguished from the Canonical Scriptures. In that 
assembly, Gelasius, the Roman Prelate, claimed the pri- 
macy above all bishops. 
The fifth schism. 

Symmachus, Prelate of Rome, was the first hierarch who 
opposed the lawful imperial authority, and justified his tur- 
bulence. 
The feast of Peter and Paul was instituted, according to Theo- 
doret and Nicephorus. But Ambrose states that the feast 
was observed in his age. — Sermo 6. That is most proba- 
bly a monkish fraudulent interpolation. 
The Emperor, through hatred of image worship, commanded* a 
painter to depict various monsters. When they were exhibit- 
ed, the image worshippers raised a great sedition. — Cedrenus. 
By a Council at Epaunum, it was decreed that processiona 
should be kept for three days near the festival of the Ascen- 
sion'— CV?^*^^*^- T^ C. Caranza. 
10* 



114 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A.D. Rohl Exap. 



520. Justin. 



627. Justinian. 
5^ 

539. 
530. 
532. 

533. 

537. 
540. 

542. 



663. 

554. 




555. 




570. 


Justin II. 


676. 




578. Tibenus. 


^367. 


Mauritius. 



69a 



>»L 



60L 



Benedict built his monastery on Mount Cassin, and insti- 
tuted the order of the Benedictins. — Bergomensis. 

The Monks of Clugny, the Carthusians, the Cistercians, and 
the Celestins belonged to that order. Anions the Bene- 
dictins have been numbered 29 Popes, 200 Cardinals, 1,603 
Archbishops, 4j 000 Prelates, and 50,000 canonized Samts! — 
Helvicus. 

Felix of Rome instituted the Extreme Unction. — FunctiuSf 
Zdb. 7. BergoTYiensis. Crispin. 

The Emperor commanded oaths to be ratified by swearing on 
the Gospels. — Polydore. Virgil^ Lib. 4. cap. 12. 

Justinian pubhshed his code. — Procopiits. Marc. 

The sixth schism. 

Dionysiu^, Abbot of Rome, introduced the computation of the 
Christian era from the birth of Immanuel. — Bedede nat. 

Justinian issued his institutes, digests, pandects, and consti- 
tutions. — Bucholcer. Sigonius. 

The seventh schism. 

Vigihus of Rome commanded that people should pray to- 
wards the East. — Pet. de Nat. F\inctius. Hospinian. 

The Feast of the Purification was instituted at ConstantiQp- 
ple. — Nicepkorus, Ldb. 17. cap. 28. Sigebert. Cedrerius 
placed it in the year 535. 

The fifth General Council at Constantinople. 

Vigihus of Rome consented that the Patriarch of Constanti- 
nople should be second in dignity and power. — Anastasius. 

Pelagius poisoned Vigilius, that he might be elected Prelate in 
his stead. — Anastasius. 

Donatus fled from Africa to Spain, and founded the first 
monastery in that kingdom. — Vossius. 

The ^vife of Childeric, King of France, was divorced, and 
immured in a nunnery, because she stood sponsor for her 
own child at its baptism. — Turon. 

Pela^us of Rome decreed that subdeacons should abandon 
their wives, or resign their offices. He was the first Prelate 
who was elected without the Emperor's consent. 

A great controversy arose in a Council held at Constantinople, 
respecting the title of Universal Bishop, which the Eastern 
Patriarch had assumed. — Greg. Ldb. 3. Epist. 69. Sleidan, 

Ofierings were instituted. — Hospinian. 

The Laity were ordered to reverence the Priesthood. — TVt- 
ron. T. C. 

The seamless coat of Christ was found in a marble chest in the 
city of Zophar, by the direction of Simeon, a Jew. — Aimon, 

Gregory of Rome appointed the sevenfold Litany and Proces- 
sion. 1. Priests. 2. Monks. 3. Nuns. 4. Children. 5. 
Virgins. 6. Widows. 7. Married persons. That was called 
the Great Litany. — Nauclej-us. Hospinian. 

Gregory adopted the title of ^'Servus Servorum Dei — Servant 
to the Servants of Gk>d." — Platina. 

John of Constantinople again asserted his claim to the title 
of Universal Bishop. — Gregory. 

Gregory ordered that images should neither be worshipped 
nor ciefaced. — Lib. 9. cap, 9. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



in 



A. O. Rom. £mp. j 


602. 


Phocas. 


604. 




606. 






Popes. 


607. 

Boniface IV. 


608. 




610. 




614.DeusDedit. 


6]7.BonifaceV. 


619. 




622. 




629. Honorius. 


636. 




640. 




653. 


Eugenius. 


660. Vitalianus. 


662. 




678. 


Agatha. 


680. 
683. 


Leo II. 


684.BenedictII. 



685. John V. 

686. Conon. 
688, Sergius. 



Mauritius the Emperor, and all his family, were murdered by 
Phocas. — Nicephorus. 

Sabinian of Rome instituted Bells and Lamps. — Polydore 
Virgil. Ldb. 8. cap. 12. Hospinian refers the invention to 
Paulinus, in the year 458. 

Pope Boniface III. obtained from the usurper Phocas the 
ecclesiastical supremacy, with the title of Oecumenicus ; 
and also that the common appellation Pope should ever 
after be restricted to the Roman Pontiff. — Sigebert. Nau- 
clems. Anastasius. Onuphrius. Platina. 

Pope Boniface IV. appointed the Feast of All- Souls, the next 
day after that of All- Saints. — Sigebert Martinus. Polo- 
nus. Other annalists impute that festival to Odilo, Abbot 
of Clugny, in the year 993. 

Mohammed began to promulge his ungodly dogmas. — Cedre- 
nus. Vincent. 

Boniface obtained of Phocas the Pantheon, and consecrated it 
to the Virgin Mary and All- Saints. — Anastasius. Bergom 

The Pope ordered that monasteries should be erected in Bri- 
tain.— 7". C. 

A Council was held at Auxerne, who enacted, that no prelate 
should sit in judgment when sentence of death is pronounced. 

Pope Deus Dedit decreed, that parents should not be Sponsors 
at Baptism for their own children ; and prohibited marriage 
between: Sponsors, and those for whom they promised at 
Baptism. 

Boniface instituted Sanctuaries for offenders. — Platina. 

By a Council at Seville, it was decreed, that no Monk sh^d 
'converse with a Nun, without three witnesses. — 7\ C. 
Olaus. Vossius. Isidore. 

The era of Mohammedism,, or the Hegira. 

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross was instituted bn 
September 14 ; to commemorate the recovery of the true 
Cross from Cosroes the Persian. — Hospinian. 

Jerusalem was captured by the Mohammedans. — TheophrasU 

The first Lent in England. — Bede. 

Prelates were permitted to have prisons in their churches, to 
punish offenders among the -^nesls.—Functius. 

Organs were introduced into the churches. — Platina. Sigebert. 

The Monastery of Denys in France was exempted from all 
civil jurisdiction.— Aimon. 

The Napkin of our Saviour, eight feet long, was found by the 
Jews, and given to the Christians. — Bede de hoc. Sanct.cap.B. 

Sixth Grand Council at Constantinople. 

The Pope commanded that the Pax should be kissed. — Poly- 
dore Virg. Lib. 5. 

The Emperor Constantine Pogonatus first granted that the 
Election of the Roman Pontiffs should be valid without 
the imperial approbation. — Bergomensis^ Ldb. 10. 

The Pope issued a book in honor of the Pall — Bergomerms. 

The eighth schism respecting a Pope. — Anastasius, 

The ninth echiBm. 



116 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A, D. Popes. 



Events. 



6Q2. Sergius. 



695. 

700. 

704. John VI. 



708. 

Constantine. 



709. 

714. Gregory II. 

723. 
725. 
730. 
744. Zachary. 

747. 

750. 

752.StephenII. 
754. 

755. 

757. Paul. 
762. 

765. 
767. 

Stephen III. 

769. 



A Council at Constantinople added 103 Canons to the Ecclesi- 
astical Law, which occasioned great contention between the 
Eastern and Western Heresiarchs and their respective ad- 
herents. — Hosjplnian. Sigonius. Baronius. 

The Nativity of the Virgin Mary appointed for a festival. — 
Hospinian. 

The Feast of Transfiguration first observed. — Hospinian. 

Aripert, King of the Lombards, gave the Roman Pontiff the 
Celtian Alps for an ecclesiastical patrimony, which was the 
first province over which the Popes exercised regular tern 
poral sovereignty and jurisdiction. — Diaconus. 

The Emperor Justinian sent for the Pope, and met him at 
Nice. There the prostrate monarch debased himself to kiss 
the Pontifi''s feet. — Platina. Blondus. Constantine was 
the first Pope who was thus adored. — Anastasius. 

The Pope procured the exemption of his recently acquired 
temporal domain from the imperial jurisdiction. — AncLstor 
sius. Nauclerus. Baronius. 

Image worship was introduced into Britain. — Bede. Bale. 
At London, a Council was held to decry the marriage of 

priests, and to establish idolatry. — Bede. 
The Emperor Leo commanded the destruction of all images 

used for worship. — Cedrenus. 

The bones of Augustin were discovered, and translated to 
Rome. — Bede. Sigebert. 

The Pope excommunicated the Emperor, on account of his 
opposition to image worship. — Anastasius. 

A priest baptized a cliild ^^ in nomine patHa^ etjilia, et spiHtus 
sancta.^' The Pope, upon the appeal to him, decided that 
the baptism was vahd, as it was the error ^f ignorance, and 
not of heresy. — Baronius. 

The Lord's prayer and creed were appointed to be read in 
English, by the Council at Cliffe ; which was assembled to 
repress the licentiousness of the priests and monks.- God/Vy. 

The Pope absolved Pepin from his oath of fidelity to Childeric, 
King of France. — Annal. Friz. 

Stephen was the first Pope who was carried on men's shoul- 
ders. — Polydore Virgil. Lib. 4. cap. 10. 

A Council, called by the Greeks, the seventh General Coun- 
cil of Constantinople, condemned images, and the worship- 
pers of them. — Baronius. 

Pepin granted to the Popedom, the exarchate of Ravenna, 
with the dutchies of Mantua, Spoletum, and Beneventum. 
Leo Ost. 

The tenth schism. — Anastasius. Platina. 

The bones of Vincent were translated to a promontoi7 in 
Portugal, thence called Cape St. Vincent. — Tudens. 

The Emperor Constantine repressed image worship. — Miscel. 

The eleventh schism. 

Constantine expelled all the monks from their monasteries, 
and commanded them to marry, under the penalty of being 
deprived of their sight. — Cedrenus. 

Ho also sold the monasteries^— ;l;Jf^^•«^^ 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



117 



A. D. Popefc 



773. Adrian. 

787. 
T94. 

801. 

806. 

813. 



814. 
816. 



824. Eugenius. 
829. 

Gregory IV. 
834. 
835. 



842. 

844. Sergius II. 



850. Leo IV. 
852. 



853. 

854. Joan: or 
John VIII. 



856. 
Benedict III. 



By a Council at Rome, the appointment of the Pope was given 
to Charles, and the Kings of France. — Functius. 

Image worship was restored by the Council of Nice. — Baron. 

A great Council at Frankfort condemned the Council of Nice, 
and the worship of images. — Eginhart 

Pope Leo crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the West. — Re" 
ginald. 

Postilswere composed by Paul Diaconus, for Charlemagne. — 
Functius. 

In a Synod at Mentz, the feasts of Andrew, Peter, Paul, John 
the Baptist, Whitsuntide, Epiphany, and the Assumption of 
Mary, were authoritatively enjoined. — Canon. 36. Those 
feasts had been previously observed. 

Another Council at Constantinople condemned image wor- 
ship, and the Emperor Leo endeavored to extirpate that 
idolatry. — Cedrenus. 

Abodv was dug up at Compostella in Spain, which the Ro- 
mish legend reports wrought miracles. The monks instantly 
swore that it was the body of James the Apostle ; thence fol- 
lowed the pilgrimage to Saint James of Compostella. — Bar. 

The twelfth schism. 

The Roman Priests were now proverbially wicked for disor 
der, pride, and uncleanness. — Platina. 

The feast of Trinity was instituted by Pope Gregory. Hosp, 

The Feast of All Martyrs, which had been celebrated on May 
12, was changed by Gregory, to the feast of All Saints, on 
November 1. — Platina. Sigebert. 

The bones of Bartholomew which had been placed in a chest 
and cast into the Indian Ocean, after having floated several 
hundred years about the globe, were found at Lipari, 
where the Saracens scattered them; but they were again 
collected by a monk, and carried to Beneventum. — Sigebert. 
Calvisius. 

The Mohammedans ravaged Italy, but could not capture 
Rome. — Blondus. 

Image worship restored at Constantinople. — Zonaras. 

The thirteenth schism. 

The original name of Sergius was Os Porci ; but he changed 
it, upon the pretext of imitating the Savior, who altered 
Simon to Peter. The custom thus commenced has been 
continued ; so that every Pope assumes a new appellative 
after his election. — Platina. Anastasius. 

Pope Leo enacted, that no layman should approach near to a 
priest during the time of mass. — Functius. 

A Council at Corduba prohibited the worship of Saints. 
Polydore Virgil. 

Peter's pence were granted as payments from England to 
Rome, by King Ethelwolf — Functius. 

Cardinals were first known at Rome. 

Popess Joan, the genuine " Mother of Harlots," was head of 
the pontificate, until her death, in consequence of the pub- 
lic premature delivery of a child, in the midst of an idola- 
trous procession going to the Lateran. — Platina. Marc 
Scotus. Sigebert. Sabellicus. 

The fourteenth schism. 



118 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A. D. Popes. 



863.Nicholas I. 

865. 

868. Adrian II. 

869. 

872. John IX. 

881. 

884. Adrian III. 

891. Formosus. 

896. 

Boniface VI. 
897. Stephen VI 

906.BenedictIV 
909.SergiusIII. 

925. John XI. 

929. 
Stephen VIII. 

930. John XII. 

954.AgapetusII 
960. John XIII. 
963. 

964. Leo VIII. 



967. John XIV. 



96& 

974. 
993. 



The Pope, and Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, recipro- 
cally excommunicated each other, with all their adherents. — 

Baronius. 
Lothaire of France professed his obedience to the Pope in 

spiritualities ; but denied his power m ^emj)oraZi^ie5. — Calv. 
The Eucharist was administered in both kinds. — Functius. 
The eighth General Council of Constantinople. 
Bells were first used in Greece. — Sabellicus. Baronius, 
Pope John was put to death for his intolerable wickedness. — 

Calvisius. 
Pope Adrian excluded the Emperor from all interference in 

the election of Popes. — Platina. 
The fifteenth schism. 
Formosus was the first prelate who was advanced to the 

papal throne. 
Pope Boniface was expelled from his office before the end of 

the first month, on account of his atrocious lewdness. 
Pope Stephen was a more outrageous monster than Boniface. 

He was seized, and strangled in prison. — Baronius, 
The sixteenth schism. 

Theodora, a renowned prostitute, ruled at Rome, and appoint- 
ed Popes. Through her licentiousness, and that of her 

ecclesiastical paramours, Rome became a "a cage of every 

unclean and hateful bud." — Baronius. 
Pope John began the custom of making boys prelates. He 

appointed a boy, five years of age. Prelate of Rheims. — Bar. 
The spear with which our Savior was wounded, was found 

at Jerusalem, and finally presented to the Emperor Ro-' 

manus. — Cedrenus. 
The two preceding Popes were murdered by the harlot Marozia, 

daughter of Theodora, that she might place in the popedom, 

John her son, of whom Pope Sergius III. was father. — Bar, 
The body of Matthew was found in Ethiopia, translated to 

Britain, and thence deposited at Solerne. — Chron. Cassii. 
The Kyrie Eleeson was first incorporated with the Enghsh 

Liturgy. — Specul. Lib. 25. cap. 85. 
Pope John was deposed for abusing his father's concubmes; 

for drinking the devil's health; and other very nefarious 

iniquities. — Platina. Baronius. Sigonius. 
Leo transferred the power of electing Popes from the people 

to the Emperor. — Gratian. 
Pope Leo was caught in adulter}^ and slain upon the spot by 

the husband. — Ptatina. 
The seventeenth schism. 
Miesko, King of Poland, commanded, that when the gospel 

was read at mass, every knight should draw his sword; 

and that all the people should cry out, " Glory be to thee, O 

Lord." — Gagwyn Chronolog. 
Pope John introduced the consecration of bells. A new bell 

was placed in the Lateran, which he called John. — Bar. 
The eighteenth schism. 
The feast of All Souls was instituted by Odilo, Abbot of Clugny. 

— Pet. de Nat. Volateran. Other authors refer it to the year 

607. The earlier period is most probably a monkish fiction. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



119 



A. D. Popo. 



996. Gregory V. 
1004. John XVIIL 
1007. 

1011. 

1019. 
Benedict VIII. 

1024.JohnXX. 



1035. 
Benedict IX. 

1043. 

1045. 
Silvester III. 



1055. Victor II. 

1057.StephenX 
1060. Nicholas II. 
1064. 

Honorius II. 
1068. 



1075.HiI(iebrand 
Gregory VII. 
1076. 

lOSO. 



1084. 

1085. 

1090. Urban II. 

1092. 
1095. 
1096. 
1098. 
llOO.Paschalll 

1102. 

1105. 



The nineteenth schism. 

The G^reeks and Latins were nominally reunited. — Baronius. 

The feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary was first cele- 
brated in France by Fulbert. — Vossius. 

The twentieth schism. 

By a Synod at Nimeguen, it was ordered, that at the mass, 
the bread should be placed on the right side of the altar, 
and the chalice on the left. — Fahricius. 

The Patriarch of Constantinople demanded to be styled 
General Patriarch, which Pope John denied. The disputes 
between them were revived. — Baronius. 

Beren^arius was condemned for denying that the body of 
Christ was in the host. — Baronius, 

The twenty-first schism. 

Pope Benedict was banished from the popedom for his wicked- 
ness. Silvester was also expelled. Gregory VI. was elected. 
They ail resided in Rome, among their respective votaries ; 
until a Council at Sutrium excluded them all, and Clement 
II. was appointed. Thus four Popes were hving at tb6» 
same time. — Baronius, 

The order of Flagellants appeared. There were three thousand 

whippers in one monastery. — Baronius. 
The twenty-second schism. 
The tv.'enty-third schism. 

A Council at Mantua confirmed the election of Popes by the 
Cardinals. — Bcrgomensis. 

The feast of the Conception of the Virgin was instituted in 
Enofland. — Anselm. Bellarmin refers the date to the year 
1120. Other writers to 1386. 

The Controversy first arose between the Emperor and the 
Pope. 

The Emperor and the Pope mutually criminated and de- 
nounced each other. — ScJiaffnah, 

Gregorv prohibited the Bohemians from celebrating their 
worship in the common language. — Baronius, 

The twenty-fourth schism. 

Bruno instituted the order of monks called Carthusians. — 
Sigebert. 

At Bunach, it was resolved, that the Pope has no power to 
depose the Emperor. — Berthold, 

The feasts of James, Matthias, Simon, Jude, and Mark, 
were appointed. — Hospinian. 

The order of the Hospitallers w^as embodied. 

Beads to pray by were first invented. — Baronius. 

The first cmsade to Palestine. — Tyre. Annal. FHz. 

The order of the Cistercians was founded. — Chron. Belg. 

The Pope's decretals were collected into one volume by Ivo 
of Chartres. — Bergomensis, Buchol. 

Controversy in England between Henry I. and Anselm, re- 
specting the investiture of the clergy. — Paris. Godwin. 

Fluentius of Florence was deprived of his prelacy, because he 
maintained that Antichrist was then born. — T. C. 



120 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A. D. Pep—. 



lI08.Paschain 



1108. 
1113. 
1116. 
1117. 
1118. 
1124. 

Honoriiis II. 
1125, 



IlSO.Innocentll. 



1141. 

1152. 

Eugenius III. 
1156. 



1157.AdrianIV. 

1159. 

1160. 

1162. Victor IV. 



ll64.PaschalIII. 

llTOCalixtusni. 

1176. 

1198. 

Innocent III. 
1203. 
1207. 

1209. 

1211. 
1212. 

1213. 

1214. 
121S 



The order of Regular Canons was established.-^— AZIs/cd* 
They seem to have assumed the same name with those 
who were embodied in 400 ; and which society had become 
extinct. 

Anselm collected the " InterHnear Gloss." — Frizing, 

The Knights of John of Jerusalem were associated. 

The order of Premonstrants was instituted. 

The twenty-fifth schism. 

The order of Templars was formed. — Tyre. 

The Archbishop of Lyons was slain at Rome, for censuring 
the beastly wickedness of the Papal dignitaries. — Cri^pinus. 

The Pope's Legate went to London, to extirpate the marriage 
of priests. At a Council, he eulogized the single state to the 
highest degree ; maintained that matrimony in a Roman 
priest was the greatest sin which he could commit ; and 
the same night was found in bed with a prostitute. — Hove- 
den. Mat. Paris. 

The twenty-sixth schism. 

The feasts of Thomas, Bartholomew, and Luke, were ap 
pointed. — Hos^pinian. 

The order of Carmelites was founded. — Gordon. Other his 
torians fix that institution in 1203. 

Gratian collected and digested the book of decretals. — Bar. 

The Emperor Frederic held the Pope's stirrup when dis- 
mounting from his horse. — Spangler. 

Arnold of Brescia was burnt for exposing the turpitude of the 
Romish priests. — Frizing. 

The order of Hermits was begun. — Nauclei^s. Oriuphrms. 

Peter Waldo, one of the early witnesses, testified against the 
popedom. — Reusner. 

The twenty-seventh schism. 

The bodies of the three wise men, Matthew 2, were trans- 
lated from Milan to Cologne ; and thence called the three 
kings of Cologne. — Bucher. 

Charlemagne was canonized by the title of Saint Charles. — 
Meyer. 

The order of Crossed Friars was organized. — Onuph. Sigon. 

TheAlbigenses first became objects of Papal notice. — An.F'riz. 

The order of Jacobites contrived by Dominic. — Bucher, 
Mat. Paris makes Pope Innocent their founder. 

Pope Innocent pubhshed his decretals. — Palmer. 

The order of Nuns called Beguines was commenced. — Chro- 
nolog. Belg. 

The order of Franciscan Friars was established by Francis. — 
Sabellicus. 

The order of the Holy Trinity was founded. — Sabellicus. 

The order of Poor Women was consociated by Saint Francis 
and Saintess Clare. — Compil. Chronolog. 

The feast called Trlumphus erucis was appointed in Spain. — 
Hist. Hospinian. 

The order of the Dominicans began. 

The Lateran Council was summoned to crush the Albigenses; 
and to confirm Transubstautiation. — Magdeburg. Cerifur. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLB. 



121 



A D. Popes. 



1218. 

Honorius III. 
1222. 

1227. 

Gregory IX. 
1233. 
1234. 

1236. 
1237. 



1244. 

Innocent IV. 
1250. 

1252. 
1260. 

Alexander IV. 
1264. Urban IV. 
1272.GregoryX 
1275. 



1282.MartinIV. 



1283. 
1285. 

Honorius V. 
1295. 
Boniface VIII. 



1297 
1298. 

1300. 
1301. 
ISll.ClementV 



The order of the Valley of Scholars was instituted. — ChrO' 

nolog. Belg. 

Grey Friars first appeared in England. — Coop. 

Pope Gregory decreed that no layman should preach. — Com," 

piL Chronology. 

The Inquisition was established. 

Hugh, Cardinal of Barcinoe, made the first concordance of 

the Bible. — Calvisius. 

Pope Gregory published his decretals. — Mat. Paris. 

The Greeks renounced all obedience to the Pope. — Mat. Paris, 

Baldwin gave to the Venetians the lance with which the Sa- 
viour was wounded ; the sponge which was applied to his 
mouth ; and a piece of the true cross. The Venetians sold 
those relics to Louis, King of France, for an immense sum.—: 
Cuspinian. 

Pope Innocent appointed that the Roman cardinals should 
wear red hats. — Mat. Paris. Platina. 

Cassiodorus ^noXe. against the Pope's power and usurpations. — 
Scaliger. 

The Bible was divided into chapters. — Genebrard. 

Nearly 100,000 of the Albigenses were massacred by the 
Papists. — Alsted. 

The feast of Corpus Christi was appointed. — Onuph. Platina. 

The order of Celestines was founded. — Polydore Virgil. 

A Council was held at Lyons. The conclave of Cardinals 
was then established ; and the superstitious reverence to the 
name of Jesus at mass was enacted. — Alsted. 

The order of Servants of Mary was established. — Sabellicus. 

The massacre of the French soldiers throughout Sicily, when 
they were divested of their arms in the mass-houses, oc- 
curred. Ii was called the Sicilian \espevs.—Nangis. 

John Paris wrote against the Roman Antichrist. — Annal. 

The order of Anchorites was commenced. — Reusner. 

Boniface contrived to sound an alarm in the ears of Pope 
Celestine, his predecessor, that if he did not resign to Boni- 
face, he would be damned, Celestine frightened, abandoned 
the popedom, and Boniface was elected. It was therefore 
said of him, that "/le entered the pontificate like a fox, ruled 
like a wolf, and died like a dog.^' — Cajetan. Platina. 

Pope Boniface issued the sixth book of decretals. — Bucher. 

The church of Lorette was enlarged, to accommodate the 
increasing pilgrims to that idolatrous temple. 

Pope Boniface instituted the first Jubilee; and in his bull, he 
styled himself " Universal Lord, both in all things spiritual 
and temporal." — Polon. 

Boniface excommunicated Philip, King of France, because he 
burnt the papal bull, which commanded that monarch to 
acknowledge himself the Pope's vassal. — Bzovius. 

The order of Templars was suppressed, and their property 
was confiscated. — Abb. Urspergensis. 

The Emperor decreed, that no fealty was due from the mon- 
archs to the Roman Pontiff", because the Pope was SeT'Vtis 
Scrvorum. — Ccmstant. Imper. 
U 



122 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A. D. Popes. 

liiii 

1317.John XXII 



1320. 
1323. 



1326. 
1331. 
1335. 

Benedict XII. 
1338. 



1341. 



1342.ClementVI. 
1347. 

1353. 

Innocent VI. 
1360. 



1361. 

1368. Urban Y. 

1370.GregoryXI. 

1373. 

1374. 



1376. 

1377. Urban VI. 
Clement VII. 



1387. 
1388. 



1389. 
Boniface IX. 



Events. 



The Emperor Henry VII. was poisoned at Beneveutum by a 
monk, when administering the mass- wafer. — Abb.Ursperg, 

The Clementine Decretals were pubhshed. 

The Pope's power to depose kings was asserted by John 
XXII. and denied by Occam. 

The Extravagants were finished and promulged. 

The Fratricella, or Poor Men of Lyons, w^ere condemned by 
the Pope. — Platina. Bzovius. 

Ulric, Secretary of the Emperor Frederic, denounced the 
Pope as ^Hhe Beast rising out of the sea^ — Abh. Ursperg, 

The twenty-eighth schism. 

The Regent of Scotland was poisoned at mass by a monk. 

Pope John promulged atheism. — Rudim. Novit. 

Great controversies arose between the Greeks and Latins. 

The Diet at Mentz enacted, that " the Emperor holds power 
immediately from God; and that General Councils are 
superior to Popes." — Trithemius. 

The order of Adamites, who taught and practised promiscu- 
ous intercourse between the sexes, was commenced in 
France. — Silv ius. 

The Pope reduced the Jubilee to fifty years. — Naiiclerus. 

The Flagellants, or w^hippers, on accounfr-of their inordinate 
sensuality, were suppressed. 

The Pope in vain attempted to entice the Greeks to submit to 
his usurped authority. — Cantacuzenus. 

The Pope confirmed the order of Dominican Gens d'armes, 
or " Brothers of Penance," to extirpate the Albigenses. — 
Hist. Magdeburg. 

Maundy-Thursday was established in England. — Polydore. 

The order of monks called Jesuati, first appeared. — Polydore. 

The nuns of Saint Bridget v/ere embodied by the Pope. 

The nuns of St. Catharine were confirmed. — Sylvius. 

The m.onks and nuns called Turlupini were condemned. 
They lived like beasts, without clothing, and in every spe- 
cies of unnatural turpitude. — Genehrard. 

John Wiclif was condemned at Oxford for his scriptural 
opinions. — Reusner. 

The twenty- ninth schism ; which continued fifty years. 

The Italian Cardinals elected Urban Pope ; and the French 
Cardinals chose Clement for Pontifi:^. Urban, with his 
myrmidons, resided at Rome. Clement and his minions 
dwelt at Avignon. Urban seized seven of Clement's Car- 
dinals, tied them up in sacks, and drowned them in ihe 
Tiber. A lasting proof of the papal infallibility ! — Platina. 
Nauclerus. 

The feast of the Conception was instituted, or renewed.— 
Bulla Boniface IX. Others fix that idolatrous festival to 
the year 1068 ; and Bellarmin in 1120. 

A controversy arose between the University of Paris, and the 
Dominicans, respecting the Virgin Mary being born without 
the original cormption of manl3nd. — Gordonus. 

Annats, the first fruits of benefices, were granted to the 
Popes, under the pretext of a war against the Turks.— 
Reusner. PiAUctius. 



CHRONOEOGICAI. TABLE. 



133 



jL D. TopH. 



1391. 
1392. 

1393. 

1397. 

Benedict XIII. 
1400. 
1410. 
JohnXXm. 

1414. 



1415. 



1416. 

1418. Martin V. 
1419. 

1428. "-^^^wrcUf 

1431. 
Eugenius IV. 

1436. 



1440. Felix V. 
1441. 



1450. 
1453. 

Nicholas V. 
1456. 
Calixtus III. 

1458. Pius II. 



1463. 



Appeals to the Pope and Annats were opposed in England. — 
Polonius. 

John Huss denounced the papacy. — Functius. 

Simony prevailed, and Dispensations and Indulgences were 
so commonly sold at Rome, that it was a proverb, " The au- 
thority of the keys and papal letters is despised." — Platina. 

Many persons were martyred at Auspurg for professing evan- 
gelical opinions. — Annal. Suevor. 

The knowledge of the Greek language vv^as revived in Italy 
by Chrysoloras. — Paemerius. 

A great Jubilee was celebrated at Rome. — Nauclerus. 

John Huss was excommunicated at Rome. The writings of 
Wiclif, Huss, Matthew Paris, and Jerom, were burnt at 
Prague. — Hist. Bohem. 

The Council of Constance assembled. That infamous as- 
sembly comprised the Emperor, 4 Patriarchs, 29 Cardinals, 
346 Prelates, 564 Abbots and Doctors, 16,000 secular Princes 
and noblemen, 4,500 prostitutes, 600 barbers, and 320 musi- 
cians and mountebanks. — Helvldius. 

John Huss was burnt at Constance, a Christian martyr, in 
violation of the Emperor's safeguard, and in conformity to 
the decree of the ungodly council, that "no faith is to be 
kept with heretics." — Hist. Bohem. 

Wiclif s doctrine was condemned by the Council of Constance. 

Jerom of Prague was burnt for the Redeemer's cause by com- 
mand of the Council of Constance. — Sylvius. 

John Oldcastle, or Cobham, was wasted to death for the cause 
of Christ in England. — Speed. 

A rebellion commenced in Bohemia under Zisca, who died of 
the plague in 1424 ; and ordered his skin to be made into a 
drum, for the use of his survivors. 

s body was dug up after it had been interred forty-one 
years, and burnt by the Pope's command. — Polydore. 

The Council of Basle was held, who granted the Bohemians 
the use of the cup at the Communion, which before had 
been denied. — Sylvius. 

Paul Craw was martyred in Scotland. — Leslie. 

The final separation of the Greeks and Latins occurred, by 
the departure of the former from the council at Basle. 

The thirtieth schism. 

The Feast of the Visitation instituted at Basle ; but Hospinian 
refers the commencement of that superstition to Pope 
Urban VI. in 1389. 

The order of friars called Minimes appeared. 

Constantinople was captured by the Turks ; and the sway of 
the nominal Greek Christians in the East was terminated 

The Feast of Transfiguration was appointed by the Pope.— 
Gordonus. Bucher. Hospinian states, that the same su- 
perstition had been commemorated in the eighth century. 

The Pope, when a private man, jEneas Sylvius, had loudly 
declaimed against the corruptions and apostacy of the 
Roman Priesthood, but after his accession to the pontifical 
throne, he condemned his own opinions. — Platina. 

Pope Pius enjoined a crusade against the Mohammedans to 
recover Constantinople. 



tt^l 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 



A- D. Popes. 



1465. Paul II. 

1470. 

1478. 
l479.SixtuslV, 

1492. 

1498. 

Alexander VI. 
1510. Julius II. 

1515. Leo X. 

1516. 

1517. 



The Cardinals were directed to ride on mules, sumptuously 
adorned in scarlet and purple. — Platina. Revelation 17 : 
1 — 6. 

The Pope reduced the period of the Jubilee to 25 years.— iln- 
nal. Belg. 

The Inquisition was first instituted in Castile. 

Wesselin of Worms was condemned as a heretic, for declar- 
ing against indulgences. — Ahh. Ursperg, 

Christopher Columbus discovered America. 
Jerom Savonarola was burnt at Florence, for preaching ths 
true gospel. 

Martin Luther was sent to Rome on behalf of the monastery ' 

of Wittemberg. 
Cardinal Ximenes published the Complutensian Bible in the 

Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, and Latin languages. 
Zuingle condemned the monastic life, and pubhcly denounced 

image worship and other idolatrous superstitions in Switz- 
erland. 
Martm Luther announced his ninety-Jive propositions against 

the Pope's indulgences and pardons of sin, at Wittemberg, 

October 30, 1517. 
The Christian Reformers " came out of Babylon the 

GREAi; ;" and thus commenced the restoration of pure rb- 

LIGION. 



fRANSLATION OF THE LATIN EXTRACTS WHICH OCCUR IN 
THE FIRST CHAPTER. 

It having been suggested, that it will add greatly to the utility of these 
illustrations of Popery, that all the passages in foreign languages should 
be translated ; the sentences which already have been incorporated, 
therefore, are now presented in English, in" the order in which they 
occur. From the commencement of the second Chapter, the English 
version will be inserted immediately after the original quotation. 

Page 64. Line 34. Which, however, it extremely interests us to know. 

Page 68. Line 26. If you explore the Scriptures, you will find none 
of those rules, and none of a similar kind. Tradition is the author of 
them, custom has confirmed them, and by faith they are observed. 

Page 69. Line 31. Always and everywhere from the beginning of the 
Church to the twelfth century, the communion was celebrated with bread 
and wine. 

Page 77. Line 19. There is an essential difference between the parti- 
cular Church of the Roman city, and the Church diffused among all the 
nations of the empire, who worship the only Savior, rejoicing in the 
name and privileges of Romans. 

Page 77. Line 31. The consent of the Fathers is neither to be sought 
nor followed in all questions of the Divine law ; but only, and chiefly in 



TRANSLATION OF THE LATIN. 1^ 

the rule of faith, that which belongs to the substance of the Christian 
belief, and the Apostolic creed. 

Page 78. Line 22. Pictures ought not to be in the Churches. 

Page 79. Line 3. Ignavise sectatores ; " slow bellies." Titus 1 : 12. 

Page 80. Line 26. That is most rightly believed, which the universal 
Church holds ; which was not instituted by councils, but always retained, 
and delivered by Apostolic authority. 

Page 81. Line 14. The dead should be honored for imitation, not 
adored on account of religion. We honor them with love, not with ser- 
vice ; nor do we construct temples to them. 

Page 81. Line 30. The division of one and the same mystery cannot 
happen without great sacrilege. 

Page 82. Line 19. Bishops, and presbyters, and deacons, must refrain 
from their wives, according to the canons. 

Page 82. Line 31. The Church of God is filled with chaff and tares. 

Page 83. Line 14. You preside in human affairs as guardian of the 
Divine religion. 

Page 83. Line 16. He takes care of the Universal Church, to give 
safety to all. 

Page 83. Line 18. He possesses a royal and sacerdotal mind, because 
he has a most pious solicitude for the Christian religion. 

Page 83. Line 23. Their feasts surpassed the royal tables. 

Page 83. Line 25. '^ Make me Bishop of Rome, and I will instantly 
become a Christian." 

Page 84. Line 17. No person shall engrave or depict the sign of the 
Savior's cross, either in the earth, or on a stone, or in marble laid upon 
the ground. 

Page 84. Line 35. They, the heretics, are not held to adduce those 
things which truly are in the pages of the Sacred Books. But all that 
which we declare is referred to Divine authority. 

Page 85. Line 3. Mass was celebrated over the bodies of Peter and 
Paul. 

Page 86. Line 24. Monasteries are shops of abominations, asylums 
for criminals, whirlpools of inheritances, and gulfs for patrimonies. In- 
stead of remedies, they are incentives to lust, and their safe-guards are 
destroyed by force. 

Page 88. Line 31. Proud, novel, blasphemous, profane, diabolical, 
foolish, frivolous, anti-christian, the precursor of Antichrist. 

Page 91. Line 17. No ancient Catholic ever thought, that images 
should be honored or worshipped. 

Page 91. Line 23. Who deny the veneration of images which is ap- 
pointed by the Church. 

Page 93. Line 14. He denounced all sorts, and in every mode, the 

11* 



126 TRANSLATION OF THE LATIN. 

adoration, service, veneration, observance, worship, bending of the neck, 
head, much more of the knees, oblations of incense, lights, &c., to images. 

Page 93. Line 27. No age ever was more illiterate or wretched. 

Page 93. Line 29. Monsters of the basest life, and every way most 
impure, were thrust into Peter's seat. 

Page 96. Line 9. Monks were the artificers of all evil. 

Page 96. Line IL Through Divine indignation, the Normans, a 
very barbarous and cruel people, were permitted to inflict highly merited 
punishment upon those most corrupt villains. 

Page 96. Line 16. He who knew grammar only, in that rude age, 
was esteemed a learned scholar. 

Page 96. Line 19. Priests who could only perform the ablutions and 
the chants, and knew the beads or the psaltery, besides the creed and the 
Lord's prayer, were deemed well qualified for the ministry. 

Page 96. Line 33. Some of the priests invented the most flagitious and 
unnatural wickedness, which then was practised by all. 

Page 96. Line 34. The houses of the priests and monks were brothels 
for harlots, and filled with assemblies of buflfoons ; where in gambling, 
dancing, and music, amid every nameless crime, the donations of royalty, 
and the benevolence of princes, the price of precious blood, were most 
prodigally squandered. 

Page 97. Line 1. At that period there were no hospitals, no repairs 
of the temples, no examples of piety, no pursuit of the liberal arts, but 
stupor, madness, and oblivion of morals pervaded the minds of mankind. 

Page 97. Line 5. The whole ecclesiastical stale was then so corrupt, 
that t?ie regular equally with the secular priests were totally abandoned 
to the lusts of the flesh. 

Page 97. Line 15. Scarcely was there any vestige of external reli- 
gion. In the best monasteries, that root of all evil, the wicked step- 
mother of monks, covetousness of wealth predominated. 

Page 98. Line 4. They ascribed to the Mother of God, and to her 
girdle, garment, garters, and cap ; sanctification, strength, propitiation, 
salvation, help, and every other quality, which is essential to a Mediator 
with God, so that no one could be saved unless by her. 

Page 98. Line 19. The devils howled, because the wailing souls of 
the condemned were snatched from their grasp, by the prayers of the 
monks of Clugny, praying without cessation for the repose of the dead. 

Page 98. Line 29. I adore the true God ; I call tlie people ; I collect 
the priests ; I worship the saints ; I teach the festivals j I deplore the 
dead ; I drive away pestilence and devils. 

Page 99. Line 3. The Pope is judge of all, but can be judged by none. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 



I. Principles of the Papacy. II. The Dignity and Dominion of the Roman 
Pontiffs i and their Court. III. The Subordinate Appendages of tht 
Papal Hierarchy, 

I. The primary hypothesis of Popery is the supremacy of 
the Roman Pontiff; which implies, that all rules of faith and 
practice depend upon him as the infallible head and Lord of the 
Church. Hence it is proclaimed as a fundamental article of 
belief, that nothing must be believed or done unless the repre- 
sentative of the Church commands it. From which principle, 
it is maintained, that human salvation depends upon the ac- 
knowledgment of the Roman Pontiff as the supreme head of the 
Church ; that he is chief teacher ; and that there is no other 
foundation of faith than his decree. As it is therefore evident, 
that he will not prescribe doctrines of belief inconsistent with his 
own domination ; he claims the inherent right, as High Priest, 
to apply the sacrifice of Christ to the pardon of sinners ; and 
as king, he arrogates the power of dispensation, to dispose of the 
salvation of Christ, and to appropriate it according to his will. 
Thus the demonstration of truth to the conscience altogether is 
superseded by his sole authority and prescription. 

The Popish errors and apostacy originated either m the lust 
of power, from the determination of the Prelates to extend their 
spiritual authority and jurisdiction ; or from ignorance or mis- 
understanding of the nature and discipline of Christianity ; or 
from the desire to retain the rites of Paganism, thereby to attract 
the heathens to embrace Christianity. All the heresies of Popery 
appertain either to the Pontifical government and the hierarchy ; 
or to its doctrines and faith ; or to its ceremonies and public wpr- 



128 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

ship. The result was an intolerable despotism over conscience, 
and heresy, and idolatry, and superstition. 

The origin and progressive advances of the Popedom, from 
the period when Constantino became Emperor, until the coro- 
nation of the Man of Sin, have already been illustrated ; we 
shall proceed now to delineate its form and errors. 

The basis, upon which the Pontifical despotism, which is con- 
joined with the Papal superstitions, is founded, is composed of 
several essential ingredients; and the extermination of either of. 
the particles would subvert the whole Babylonish superstruc- 
ture. As the afiairs of religion, and of the soul's eternal wel- 
fare, are of inefiable importance ; far more momentous than all 
terrestrial interests ; the Romanists invented a supreme control- 
ling power, indivisible, immutable, and permanent, out of whose 
jurisdiction, as they averred, every person was exposed to the 
present curse and eternal anguish. 

The despotism thus established, comprised an illimitable 
authority to maintain their principles, to coerce obedience to 
their mandates, and to decide upon the eternal doom of mankind. 
All which was cemented by the assumption, that every official 
decree and act of that ecclesiastical power embodied in the Pope, 
was infallibly valid and ratified in heaven ; notwithstanding the 
ignorance, impiety, errors, and atrocities of the Pontifl^s, who 
thus issued their mandates and decretals. 

The form of that tremendous autocracy may be seen in the 
dicta of Popes Gregory VII. and Innocent III. In his 
Epistles which were written in 1074, Book 2, Gregory thus 
decides : " The Roman Pontiff alone is called universal. He 
alone can ordain and depose bishops. It is lawful to him alone 
to enact laws as necessity demands. His name alone, as the 
only one in the world, should be recited in the Church. No 
general synod should be called without his mandate. No chapter 
or book can be canonical without his authority. His decision 
can be judged and opposed by no man. All causes must be re- 
ferred to the court of Rome, which never has erred, and never 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 129 

Innocent III. Decretals, Book 1, Title 33, affirms, that "it 
is essential to salvation for every person to be subject to the 
Roman Pontiff'* 

The means by which that stupendous spiritual despotism has 
been preserved, are derived from the character of his subjects, 
and the false dogmas which are accommodated to that domina- 
tion. 

The subjects of the Pope are the common people, and those 
who belong to the ecclesiastical orders. The latter are a nume- 
rous army, who endeavour by various arts, strength and strata- 
gems, to increase and amplify the dominion of their prince. 
Puffendorf, Hist, Univ., Cap. De Papa. That army is composed 
of the common priests, or of monks, whose generals reside at 
Rome, and who despatch their orders to all the ends of the 
earth, with a secrecy, swiftness, and success, which are unpa- 
ralleled in the history of mankind. 

Another method by which the Pope establishes and preserves 
his authority and hierarchy is through false doctrines. It is a 
mighty support of the Roman despotism, that it refers every 
thing to augment the predominance and wealth of the ecclesias- 
tical body. Thus the gospel was perverted to sustain that dire- 
ful sway ; and corrupt traditions were added to sanctify the 
ungodliness; by which it was contended, that an absolute 
monarchy was the best form of Church government ; and that 
the Bishop of Rome, by divine right, possessed supreme and 
absolute jurisdiction over every ecclesiastic of all grades in the 
world. 

The Pope claims power to call general Councils, to preside 
]n them, and to give their decisions that authority which is es- 
sential to the boasted infallibility, and also, to determine upon 
the character of books, so that none can be received as genuine, 
or proper to be perused, without the Papal sanction. The 
authority of the Holy Scriptures was even declared to depend 
upon the will and approbation of the infallible vicar of Christ, 
as vicegerent of God upon earth. Hence, they assumed to 
conceal and exclude the Scriptures altogether, and to substitute 



130 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. - 

the traditions of men instead of the word of God. In conse- 
quence of that measure, the Roman hierarchy was established 
upon ignorance, and has been prolonged by it : for the Roman 
priests have interdicted the perusal of the Scriptures, lest the 
people should discover truths contradictory to the Popedom, de- 
tect the frauds of their hierarchs, and emerge from their darkness' 
to reproach their unfeeling task-masters. 

From that prolific error, others have flowed. The Papal 
casuists teach, that ignorance is preferable to knowledge. Bel- 
larmin De Justificat. Book 1, Cap. 7. They eulogize implicit 
faith, which is only a blind assent to the Papal declarations and 
acts. Faith is defined by them to be a general belief of that 
which the Pope teaches. They deny the use of the Bible, and 
maintain, that it should be translated into no language but the 
Latin, which was consecrated on the cross of Christ. In short, 
they affirm that the Scriptures are imperfect, uncertain, and do 
not contain all the doctrine which is necessary to salvation, 

By thus excluding the Scriptures from general dissemination , 
and by substituting their ovra traditions as superior to the com- 
mandments of God, many heretical novelties were introduced ; 
which overw^helmed the people with ignorance, crime, and de- 
lusion. 

Among those errors, all which directly promoted the ambi- 
tion, opulence, and pomp of the priesthood, the following may 
be enumerated as the principal. Remission of sins ; auricular 
confession ; satisfaction by works ; judicial absolution from sm ; 
a treasury of good works of supererogation ; the increase of 
the sacraments ; the intention of the priest to fulfil the requisi- 
tions made by the church ; the communion in both kinds ; novel 
degrees in consanguinity ; priestly celibacy ; extreme unction ; 
and the canonization of saints. From which dogmas, and 
practices, flowed those strange " ceremonial antics," superflu- 
ous temples, altars, and festivals, which were indefinitely multi- 
plied, that the myriads of indolent priests might have an income 
for their support. To all which may be added, the prohibition 
of food, the anathemas, and multitudes of lying miracles, which 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. ^ 131 

were first invented and are still practised, solely to extract 
money from those persons of wealth who were imbued with 
deep superstition. All those crafty contrivances immediately 
strengthened the Papal domination, and eventually removed from 
the earth, both the jurisdiction and reign of Immanuel. 

II. The Papacy is a monarchical government, both civil and 
ecclesiastical, founded upon the pretext of Divine right and sup- 
ported by the plea of religion. Sanderus de visib. Monarch. 
Lib. 8, Cap. 50, proclaims, that unlimited extent, universal do- 
minion, and temporal prosperity and grandeur, are the marks of 
the true Church. The Popes in consequence have ever claimed 
the prerogatives of the Deity, and boasted that all power is com- 
mitted to them in heaven and earth ; and have pretended to de- 
pose monarchs, transfer kingdoms, and to elevate and destroy as 
their cupidity or revenge dictated. 

Politianus thus addressed Pope Alexander VL : *' We rejoice 
to see you raised above all human things, and exalted even to 
Divinity itself, seeing there is nothing except God, which is not 
put under you." The canonists often blasphemously ascribe the 
names and attributes of Christ to the Popes ; and Bellarmin de 
Cone, Lib. 2, Cap. 17, declares : " Nomina omnia quae tribuun- 
tur Christo eadem et pontifici. All the names and titles of 
Christ equally belong to the Pope." In the canon law, Dist. 96, 
Canon 7, and DecrefrGreg.,Tjib. 1, Tit. 7, in Glossae, it is writ- 
ten : '" The Pope who was called God can neither be bound nor 
loosed by any secular power, for it is manifest, that God cannot 
be judged by men." With that blasphemy, coincide many 
synods and councils ; and almost all the writers who in modern 
times are of any authority among the papists. The Jesuits 
especially maintain, that to deny the Papal supremacy in all its 
amplitude, is a great heresy : and Fitz Simon Brittannomach, 
Lib. 2, Cap. 3, Pag. 679, expressly declares, that to defend the 
prerogatives of civil governments against the pretensions of the 
Roman Pontiff, is a crime w^orthy of damnation. 

By the prevalence of those monstrous and impious absurdities 
which the Popes and their minions advanced, Rome ecclesiasti- 



.133 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

eal became a second time mistress of the world, ruling over the 
kings of the earth ; and her lordly spiritual despots, actually- 
surpassed the proudest of her impious Cesar s, and even Nebu- 
chadnezzar, and Belshazzar, in pomp, haughtiness, tyranny, 
magnificence, idolatry, wickedness, and cruelty. 

Having attained the rank of temporal princes ; they use the 
most despotic style, and all their acts are of the most arbitrary 
character. They are carried on men's shoulders amid univer- 
sal homage and adoration. In the plenitude of their power, they 
send their nuncios and legates into all nations ; where, by their 
incessant intrigues, they excite interminable discord ; engage in 
every broil; and then intrude themselves as judges, umpires, 
and arbiters, in all cases of peace and war. 

Prior to the Reformation of the sixteenth century, appeals 
of all kinds were made to the Popes, and disputes submitted to 
their adjudication. By this means they directed, to the promo- 
tion of their own ambition and luxury, all national affairs. They 
demanded, and in many cases received, the surrender of the 
European kingdoms, as fiefs to their power ; and imposed oaths 
of homage and fidelity on the temporal sovereigns. To dimin- 
ish the civil authority, and to aggrandize their own usurpation, 
and the influence and wealth of the priestcraft, they invented the 
crusades, and drove the silly multitudes to perish in every pos- 
sible torture. Royal titles and kingdoms were sold or presented 
as a donation to the vilest of their myrmidons. Excommunica- 
tions, anathemas, interdicts, and all the varieties of Papal 
thunder, were resounded continually to gratify their diabolical 
resentments. Seventy of the monarchs of Europe, at different 
periods, were denounced by them ; which through superstition 
and abjectness occasioned indescribable iniquity and anguish. 
Subjects were absolved from their allegiance, excited to revolt, 
and authorized to murder their excommunicated rulers: and 
when the princes were not the absolute victims of the Pontifi- 
cal revenge, they were obliged to submit to the most scornful 
indignities. The European history of the middle ages, and 
especially the life of the Emperors Frederick and Henry IV., 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 133 

and Henry II., and John of England, and many others, contain 
startling proofs of the diabolical pride and malignity of " the 
Man of Sin, who exalted himself above all that is called God." 

In addition to those displays of arrogance, the Popes have 
claimed jurisdiction over all countries known find unknown; 
thus they divided the East and the West between the Portuguese 
and the Spaniards. They also claim supreme control over both 
heaven and hell ; commanding all the celestial hosts and the in- 
fernal spirits to execute their commands. Pope Clement VI. 
issued an edict in favor of those who died when going on a pil- 
grimage to Rome during the year of Jubilee. We command, 
said that blasphemous " Son of Perdition" — " We command the 
angels of Paradise to introduce that soul into heaven." It is 
also gravely affirmed, that the Popes have obliged the demons in 
Tophet, to yield up the souls whom they had taken as their prey 
and prisoners ; for the Papal legend emphatically declares, that 
the soul of the Pagan Emperor and persecutor, Trajan, was re- 
leased from hell and saved, by the interposition of saint Gregory. 
Revis. du Cone, de Trev. Lib. 1 and 2, Pag. 130 and 257. 
Diacon. in vit. Greg. L, Lib. 2, Cap. 44. 

The history of Europe prior to the Reformation of the six- 
teenth century demonstrates, that it is impossible for mankind to 
enjoy peace as long as the Pontifical power is tolerated. All 
the commotions and wars of Europe, from the seventh century to 
the sixteenth, were either directly instigated or indirectly encour- 
aged by the Italian Pontiffs. The power of Rome was first 
evolved amid public calamities ; it was continually strengthened 
by crime and treachery ; and it w^as finally cemented by perse- 
cution and massacre. 

III. The subordinate persons connected with the Popish ec- 
clesiastical system have been well adapted to support that 
accursed despotism. The prelacy and the priesthood, the con- 
vents of friars and nuns, with the monkish orders, and especially 
the existing canons, are all excellently contrived fully to sustain 
the tyrannical power. The Romish priests are indissolubly 
linked together ; and by a gradual succession of ranks ascend 
12 



134 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

to the Papal chair. Laymen are subject to the priesthood ; th# 
inferior priests are devoted to their superiors, and every one ot 
them, from the haughty scarlet colored cardinal " to the meanest 
curate, must obey the pontifical nod." Of the monkish orders, 
the general at Rome with great facility governs all his subjects, 
however widely scattered. Of their money they are fleeced, 
their consciences are directed, and their passions are inflamed, 
oi^ly to promote their own views and interests. 

Pride, turbulence, avarice, and ambition, are inseparable from 
the priests of the Romish craft ; and they have always manifest- 
ed an unflinching resolution to protect and support that ungodly 
contrivance. Every artifice has been adopted to gain them cre- 
dit and veneration, and to engage them entirely in the interests 
of Romanism, and to secure them more effectually in their de- 
pendence upon the Pope. 

The Roman priests and friars have constantly interfered in 
all the civil affairs of nations ; and when opposed in their 
unholy manoeuvres, they " have turned the world upside down''' 
to avenge their falsely alleged injuries. All their ecclesiastical 
legions have been called into action. They have embroiled the 
nations, threatened the civil authorities, and convulsed the whole 
order of society. For that unholy work, the Prelates have been 
endowed with large salaries, and every factitious appendage and 
honorable title have been contrived to give them influence. 
Fascinating sacerdotal garments, palls, surplices, and the whole 
paraphernalia of the wardrobe of Babylon, were superadded, to 
give them a mystic exterior pomp, and to attract superstitious 
veneration. It was the prerogative of the Pope alone to confer 
investiture with the staff' and ring ; and priests, who accepted of 
ecclesiastical offices from laymen, and who took oaths of alle- 
giance to temporal potentates, were pronounced accursed; and 
from that compliance with the claims of the civil powers, they 
were expressly interdicted. New oaths of unrestricted obedience 
to the Pope and the superior hierarchs were enforced ; and 
those obligations, in connexion with their celibacy, rendered 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 135 

them altogether a distinct order in the various countries where 

they resided. 

One of the most extraordinary and pernicious results of the 
Papal usurpations, appeared in the exemptions which were 
claimed for the priestly character ; so that their persons were 
declared sacred, and even their wickedness was not punishable 
by the civil judges and courts. In connexion with that dread- 
ful immunity was the admission of the convents and mass 
houses, as sanctuaries for all criminals ; by which means justice 
was interrupted, and every species of sin was multiplied with 
impunity. To which was conjoined a release from all taxation 
for the national welfare; thus enabling the ecclesiastics to 
increase their wealth and profligacy, in exact proportion as their 
silly enslaved devotees were forcibly impoverished and debased. 
The orders of monks and nuns were more mischievous in a 
social aspect, than even the common priests. They depopulated 
and fleeced the nations to sustain the Papal throne, and to weak- 
en the temporal potentates. To secure their obedience, the Popes 
declared them perfectly free from all civil and even episcopal 
jurisdiction. Notwithstanding all their diversity of country, 
garb, mode of life, language, and distance of station, besides 
incessant variance and wrangling with each other, they were all 
united in their subordination to the Roman PontiflT, and in their 
resolute efforts by every possible manoeuvre to sustain the Popish 
priestcraft. 

The Papal ecclesiastics have been despatched into all coun- 
tries, by every artifice to subjugate the people. Through 
fabulous pictures, vows of poverty, professions of self-denial, and 
*' lying wonders," they robbed the people of every blessing which 
appertains to human existence upon earth. The monasteries, 
and female convents which they erected, and into which they 
inveigled wealthy and thoughtless youth, and in which " sepul- 
chres of goodness, and castles of misery," millions of persons 
have been incarcerated as if in a tomb while living — those 
edifices were the privileged haunts of indolence, sensuality, and 
the most flagrant and inordinate sins in all their incurable 



tS6 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

rottenness. Monks and friars and nuns, of every age, and place, 
and grade, and order, have always been the most ignorant, 
bigoted, corrupt, selfish, and revengeful transgressors. Their 
vows of union, secrecy, and servility, have ever rendered them 
the most abject tools of the court of Rome ; and the strongest 
pillars of the Papal supremacy and infallibility. The power of 
the Roman Pontiff is now, as it always has been, fearfully for- 
midable, on account of that tremendous jurisdiction which is 
thus exercised ; not so much because of their bold and desperate 
seditions and rebellions, as of the impenetrable secrecy with 
which, through auricular confession, their diabolical enterprises 
are continued and accomplished. One of the Popes used to 
boast, that he had 288,000 parishes, and 44,000 monasteries, 
under his supreme and authoritative control. 

The startling inference, therefore, of a profound writer upon 
the principles of Romanism, in their influence upon the liberty 
and interests of nations, is too momentous and appropriate to bo 
omitted. " Temporal power united with ecclesiastical authority 
is essential to the Papacy ; and they never can be entirely sepa- 
rated until the Pontifical dominion is destroyed. The mitre 
and the crown are so firmly consolidated, that they cannot be 
divided — and the temporal supremacy of the Popes has been so 
often established and ratified by the decretals and canons of 
councils, that it cannot be renounced without denying the Papal 
infallibility, and thus subverting the whole Babylonish super- 
structure. Consequently, wherever Popery exists, there is a 
state within a state. Every papist declares himself inimical to 
that Protestant country in which he resides, because he depends 
upon a foreign potentate ; and as the claims of the Pope, the 
independent rights of the reformed temporal governments, and 
the freedom and prosperity of the Protestant state, are totally 
incompatible ; it is impossible for a papist to be faithful, and to 
swear bona fide true and entire allegiance to the civil govern- 
ment. 

*' Popish priests, whether established or tolerated, are public 
pests and cankerworms to the body politic. In Protestant coun- 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. M7 

tries, iheir pretended oaths of homage and fealty are irreconci- 
lable with their vows of canonical obedience ; and their pro- 
fessed subjection to the laws, is nullified by their more solemn 
engagements to promote and maintain the privileges of their 
order and of the Popedom. To tolerate Roman priests in a 
Protestant land, is not a wiser practice, than it would be to 
hire the commissioned spies of a hostile foreign power, to seduce 
the people to rebellion ; and to allow a body of active and nefa- 
rious conspirators, to abrogate the laws and subvert the govern- 
ment, which obliged them to cultivate decorum and rectitude." 
Scoto Brit., Page 67, 76. 

It is an inquiry of ineffable importance, upon what founda- 
tion and by what means that stupendous despotism which has 
been exercised by the Roman Pontiff was sustained ? In an- 
swer, it must be observed ; that the Papal power includes the 
claim of supremacy without control, and of infallibility without 
defect; as the sole and heaven-appointed authority, by which the 
faith and practice of every papist^ are categorically and without 
scruple determined. 

How was that Papal infallibility/ exemplified 1 The prin- 
ciples advanced by the claim of infallibility are these : " The 
Church of Christ is the rule of faith, the judge of controversy, 
visible, universal, and without error. The Roman communion 
is that Church. The Pope is, by Divine right, its sovereign 
head, supreme judge and lawgiver in all things relating to reli- 
gion, whether as to faith, manners, or discipline — who, as the 
vicegerent of Jesus Christ, cannot err ; but upon every point of 
revelation, pronounces sentence clearly, fiistinctly, and with 
certainty infallible." This privilege is of vast extent, and it 
zoxi\.y^X(dt\.^xA'$> plenary poioer. 1. To determine upon the can- 
onical authority of the Sacred Scriptures, and demand the belief 
or rejection of them in conformity with the Papal decision. 2. 
To authorize' the knowledge of the celestial volume for us. This 
principle, however, is now very much altered. Formerly popes, 
cardinals, and the whole minor train of " friars, black, white, and 
jp^ray,-- insisted, that it would have been better for the Church if 
12* 



138 THE PONTIFICIAL HIERARCHY. 

there were no Bible, and contended, that they derived not their 

existence from the gospel, but that the canon of revelation was 
indebted for its use among men to their permission. That dog- 
ma, since the invention of printing and the reformation, has 
not been much promulged, although it is still generally believ- 
ed and practised among the adherents of the Papacy, 3. To 
expound the sense of the Holy Oracles, and with all that certi- 
tude, that every Christian is obliged without scruple to believe 
it. Hence, under Papal interpretation, vice and virtue change 
their characteristics. Error and truth become metamorphosed ; 
and although Popes and councils in every age, have contradicted 
each other to the utmost distance of possible separation ; and 
notwithstanding they have, with all gravity, fulminated every 
anathema which infernal malignity could invent against each 
other, their whole odious mass of contradictions and lies we are 
implicitly to credit, because they are sanctioned by the mother 
of abominations. 4. To decide peremptorily upon the additional 
doctrines and duties which are indispensable to salvation ; and 
to supply as emergencies require, from tradition and expedien- 
cy, the deficiencies which they avow are obvious in " the Scrip- 
ture of Truth." To the operation of which claim, all the ab- 
horrent appendages of the Roman superstitions in worship, the 
stupendous errors of their pretended creed of faith and morals, 
and the debasing inimorality of their conversation and practice, 
are indebted for their origin. 5. To decide all controversies 
without reference to scripture, conscience, or any other tribunal. 
That arrogation of boundless wisdom was evolved in the most 
contemptible specimens of ignorance and absurdity ; sometimes 
by procrastinating a sentence until all the controvertists were 
dead ; at other periods, recommending; peace among the mendi- 
cant orders, that neither of them might be alienated from their 
servitude ; always legislating in favour of the strongest party ; 
and invariably promulging bulls in direct opposition to the 
rights of conscience, the dictates of Scripture, and the ordinances 
of Jehovah Jesus. 

How was that Papal supremacy exercised ? The authority 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. , 139 

of legislation and jurisdiction claimed by the Pontiff of the anti- 
christian apostacy is unlimited and supreme. " He not only 
pretends that the whole power and majesty of the Church reside 
in his person, and are transmitted from him to the inferior 
bishops, but asserts the absolute infallibility of all decisions and 
decrees which he pronounces from his lordly tribunal.'^ Accord- 
ing to the genuine Romish faith, he is *' the only Adsible source 
of the universal power which Christ has granted to the Church. 
All bishops and subordinate officers derive from him alone their 
authority and jurisdiction. He is not bound by any laws of the 
Church, nor decrees of councils. He is the supreme lawgiver 
of that sacred community, and his edicts and commands, it is in 
the highest degree criminal to oppose or disobey." 

This Pontifical supremacy disclosed itself in the enactment of 
laws for the government of the Church ; in the ecclesiastical 
immunity from all temporal rulers ; and in the disposal of king- 
doms and empires, as a prerogative inalienably attached to the 
dignity and office of the Pope. It is astonishing, that any por- 
tion of the human family could have so far relinquished their 
rights and privileges, as to submit to a power so unfounded in its 
nature, so depraved in its practice, so subversive of all the liga- 
ments of society, and so derogatory to the God of providence. 
By the effects of that ungodly domination, the whole world was 
"turned upside down." At the promulgation of a Papal bull, 
Christianity and irreligion lost their distinctive characteristics. 
The Church of God was transmuted into the Synagogue of Satan. 
The idolatrous worship of demons was restored under infallible 
authority. The most ridiculous contradictions were obtruded as 
articles not only demonstrable, but of self-evident certainty. The 
exemption of the Papal priests from the operation of national 
laws transformed the whole state of society; and the claims 
which they made, to adopt their own language, consisted of the 
following with innumerable other similar assumptions — "Angels 
in heaven dare not aspire to the authority of the priesthood. 
The hierarchs, the priests of the Church, create their Creator, 
and hav« power over th« body of Chxiat. The prieirfliood 



140 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

walketh hand in hand with the Godhead, and priests are Gods, 
surpassing as mtich in dignity the royal office, as the soul sur- 
passefh the body. The power of priests is so great, and their 
excellency so noble, that heaven depends on them. Joshua 
stopped the sun, but priests stay Christ. The creature obeyed 
Joshua, but the creator obeys the priest. Whatever God is in 
heaven, the priest is on earth." All that blasphemy a true papist 
most conscientiously believes ; and consequently, when the 
nations were under the Romish ecclesiastical despotic dominion, 
" the people who sat in darkness, saw not the great light, and to 
them who sat in the region and shadow of death no light sprung 
up." In usurping the sole authority, as God's vicegerent, to 
distribute the kingdoms of the beast, without earthly interference 
or opposition ; the Popes excited and nurtured an almost unceas- 
ing combustion among the European nations. Every species 
of disorder raged in consequence of that anti-social machination. 
The sovereigns of the people were excommunicated, anathema- 
tized and dethroned, with all the overwhelming coercion derived 
from the power which pretended that it could " do no Avrong ;" 
and with all the intimidating sanctions which a catalogue of 
celestial names, the Pope's supposititious adherents, could impart. 
One monarch was ordered to embody an irresistible force, that 
he might be enabled to drive another from his dominions; 
while his subjects were forbidden upon pain of immediate death 
for disobedience to Papal mandates, and a transfer to the quench- 
less fire, to any defence of their own country against the ruth- 
less devastations of sanguinary invaders, whose peremptory 
orders directed them to execute the Pope's curse, by fire and 
sword, unpitying massacre and universal destruction. From 
the eifects of those combined despotisms when in actual exercise, 
the ten kingdoms of the Beast, in character and similitude, fre- 
quently approximated a general Aceldama, or vast field of 
blood, equalled only by the degradation of ignorance in which 
the people were entombed, and by the almost incredible corrup- 
tion of manners, which like a pestilence involved in its ravages 
all classes of the popedom, from the Man of Sin, through every 



^ 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 141 

rank, even to the lowest and most silly devotee who supersti- 
tiously crossed himself, or idolatrously chanted, *' Ave Maria, 
Regina coeli — Hail Mary, Queen of Heaven !" 

From this brief survey, it is evident, that every part of Ro- 
manism, theoretical, ceremonial and practical, is founded merely 
upon absolute authority, which must not ever be disputed or op- 
posed. Popery supersedes all rational inquiry, extirpates private 
judgment, and admits neither of scruple, nor doubt, nor alteration. 
All its devotees must implicitly receive the Papal dicta, and 
blindly conform to the ecclesiastical mandates. The decision of 
the Church, as they term it, or more accurately speaking, of the 
Roman Court, is the entire and sole rule of every Papist's faith 
and obedience. It is of no importance, in what form the inter 
pretation of the Roman Pontiff is communicated ; whether in a 
pretended comment, or rather perversion of the Scriptures, or in 
the musty or forged extracts from the Fathers, or by Oral tradi- 
tion, or in Papal rescripts, or decretals, or encyclical letters, or 
ecclesiastical canons, or by approved writers, or by decisions of 
universities. The determination, whatever it may be, true or 
false, correct or erroneous, rational or absurd, moral or corrupt, 
blasphemous or evangelical, must be heard, and received as ora- 
cular, "not merely as certain, but infallible." 

Notwithstanding all the arrogance and boasts of the Papal 
exemption from error ; it is a phantom that eludes our grasp, 
and like the rainbow, as we attempt to approach it, the shadowy 
attraction has either removed or disappeared. The most nume- 
rous of the Pontifical partisans affirm, that it is inseparable from 
the triple crown. Others aver, that it is in a general council. 
Some declare, that it is found in the council conjoined with the 
Pope. A few only avow, that it is diffused through the whole 
anti-christian hierarchy. And a fifth sect place its residence 
subdivided, among "all the faithful." So that as they never 
met, and never can assemble, their judgment, even if it was iden- 
tical, cannot be known. 

Thus, although the Papists cannot designate w^here the infal- 
libility is deposited, or in whom it is vested, yet they all aver, 



142 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

that they have it, as one of the essential and inseparable charac- 
ters of their community. The grossness of this delusion is 
manifest ; and, although they are totally unable to point out its 
abode or its possessors ; yet practically they all submit to the 
Roman Pontiff; so that their ignorance and infatuation neither 
diminish the influence, nor destroy the dangerous tendency of 
that blasphemous presumption, by which the most pernicious 
heresies, and idolatr^r, and ungodliness, are immutably estab- 
lished. 

The cardinal points of Popery are the supremacy and infalli- 
bility of the Papal Hierarchy. Bellarmin " De Roman. Pontif " 
says, that his discussion, "agitur de summa rei Christianas; in- 
cludes the vsum of Christianity ;" so that the unlimited sway of 
the Pope, according to him, is the essence of religion. The 
Lateran Council summoned by Leo X., Sess. 11, enacted : *' De 
necessitate salutis existit omnes Christi fideles Romano Pontifici 
subesse. It is necessary to saltation, that all believers should 
be subject to the Roman Pontiff." The Council of Trent, Sess. 
14, Chap. 7, decreed; that "supreme power on earth over the 
whole Church belongs to the Pope — pro suprema protestate sibi 
in ecclesia universa tradita." The Article XXIII. of the Romish 
creed also declares, that the Church of Rome is mistress of all 
churches, and every priest swears to obey the pope in all things, 
right or wrong, and forever. " Romanam ecclesiam, omnium 
ecclesiarum matrem et magistram agnosco ; Romanoque Ponti- 
fici, **** Jesu Christi vi carlo, veram obedientiam spondee et 
juro. I acknowledge the Roman Church the mother and mis- 
tress of all churches ; and I promise and swear true obedience 
to the Roman Pontiff, who is the Vicar of Jesus Christ." Bel- 
larmin divulges the genuine Papal sentiments, when he remarks, 
Concil. Anther., Lib. 2, Cap. 15; "The Pope is appointed by 
Christ, the Pastor and Head of the whole joint Universal 
Church." 

The claim of infallibility is still more preposterous than that 
of universal supremacy ; not only from the absurdity of suppos- 
ing, that two or more fallibles can make one infallible ; but also 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY, 143 

on account of the character of the parties, who audaciously pre- 
tend to that Divine prerogative. 

It is certain, that many of the Popes were heretics ; even ac- 
cording to the Romish judgment ; and, as such, were both cen- 
sured and ejected from their office ;. which fact not only destroys 
their impious infallibility, but also, the boasted fallacy of succes- 
sion from Peter. Notvvathstanding which self-evident proposition, 
the Romanists maintain, that their Popes may be avowed heretics, 
and yet retain their infallibility. Canon. Dist. 40, " Si Papa." — 
Franc. Victor., de Potest. Eccles., Sec. 1, Par. 6. — Bellarmin, 
Controvers. Pars 4, Quest. 2. 

It is equally true, that many of the Popes were the most im- 
pious and nefarious sinners who ever disgraced the character ot 
humanity. Platina Vit. Pontif , declares, that Benedict VIII., 
Sylvester III., and Gregory VL, were "tria teterrima monstra; 
three most filthy monsters." The same Popish biographer 
records, that John VIII. or IX., Benedict IV., John XVI., 
Stephen VL, Boniface VIII., obtained the Popedom by treach- 
ery, craft, bribery, murder, and pretended witchcraft. Pope 
Alexander VL, had two sons and a daughter, and her epitaph 
contained this phrase : " Alexandri filia, sponsa, nurus ; daugh- 
ter, wife, and son's wife." Julius II., who succeeded him, was 
a daring and notorious scorner, not only of religion, but of all 
decorum. He is infamous for his most inhuman and flagitious 
crimes. Leo X., through whose prodigality and voluptuousness 
the Reformation ostensibly commenced, publicly ridiculed Chris- 
tianity as a fable, and died in the commission of the unnatural 
"abomination." Leviticus 18: 22. Genebrard, Chronolog., 
Lib. 4, Sec. 10, narrates, that fifty Popes from John VIII. or 
Popess Joan, to Leo IX., during one hundred and fifty years, 
were " the most profligate and execrable villains who ever lived 
in the world." That decision is fully ratified even by Baronius. 

It i& also indubitable, that more than one Pope has tyrannized 
at the same period. During the " Babylonish captivity," as the 
'Italian Papists satirically denounced the period of the Pope's 
residence at Avignon, there were always two, and at the coayo- 



144 - THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

cation of the Council of Constance, three Popes, all of whom 
were condemned for their inordinate transgressions. That body, 
aided by the royal authorities, elected Martin V. for Pope, 
whose daring impiety, treachery, and wickedness, exceeded all 
the criminality of those even who were ejected for their insup- 
portable turpitude. About the year 1159, Pope Alexander III. 
contended against three competitors ; and before the close of that 
schism, three more appeared ; whose title to the triple crown was 
equally valid ; so that for some years, there were four, five, and 
six Popes at the same period ; all equally entitled to the Pope- 
dom, and every one of them the practical illustration of a demon 
incarnate. In the year 975, and also in 1045, there were three 
Popes striving for the triple crown and Pontifical throne, so that 
the Popish annalists called the Papacy at that period, "the 
triple headed Cerberus!" Which of all those pretenders, was 
the legitimate infallible? They each contradicted, and they 
each excommunicated all the others. Unless, therefore, flat 
contradictions are oracular identities, and infallible truth is the 
most perverse falsehood, those contradictions destroy all the im- 
pious claim to perfect exemption from error. To which must 
be subjoined the fact, that Popes, upon an incalculable number 
of subjects of doctrine, discipline, ceremonies, and morals, have 
differed to the very extremities of the intellectual universe. 

In reference to their pretended general councils ; they have no 
greater claim to infallibility, than the Roman Pontiff'; for they 
have contradicted each other upon' essential topics ; and espe- 
cially upon image-worship. Some councils, those at Constan- 
tinople and Frankfort denounced, and others sanctioned that 
idolatry. The councils at Constance and Basle denied the 
Papal supremacy over councils, but the Lateran affirmed, that 
the Pope is above a general council. Cardinal Cusanus how- 
ever declared. Concord. Catholi., Lib. 2, Cap. 24, that universal 
councils may err, as experience has proved. " Notandum est 
experimento rerum universale concilium posse deficere." We 
may therefore assuredly be convinced, that the nineteenth and 
twenty-first articles of the Episcopal church comprise an 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 146 

accurate statement. ** As the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, 
and Antioch have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath 
erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but 
also in matters of faith. General councils have erred, even in 
things pertaining to God," 

Stapfer de Papismo, thus explains and corroborates the pre- 
ceding delineation of the Pontifical hierarchy. His principles 
combine a lucid exposition of the rights of conscience, against 
the wiles and the usurpations of the " dragon, the be^st,-^ and the 
false prophet." 

" 1 . Jesus Christ is the head and teacher of the Church, who 
only speaking through his word is to be heard, and w4io alone 
is Lord in his kingdom." 

This proposition is proved by the following arguments. 

God the Father declared that Jesus is the only teacher and 
prophet of his Church. Deuteronomy 18: 18, 19. Matthew 17 : 
5. Acts 3 : 22, 23. 

Christ himself claimed those prerogatives. Matthew 23: 8, 

10. Matthew 11: 27-29. 

Christ was acknowledged by the Apostles to be the only head 
of the Church. John 1 : 8, 9. John 6 : 68. 1 Corinthians 3 : 

11. 1 Timothy 6: 3. Ephesians 4: 5, 14, 15. 

All the primitive Christians so confessed his dignity. Hippo- 
lytus, Tom, I. Op. contra Noetum, Cap. 9. Tertullian, Prescript. 
Hereticorum, Cap. 6. Cyprian, Epist., Lib. 2. Epist. 3, ad Ce- 
cilium. Optatus, Lib. 5. Schism. Donatist. adversus Parme- 
nianum. 

Those characters of authority and infallibility could only be- 
long to a being of Christ's infinite dignity, both in person and 
ofiice. John 1: 18. John 6: 30. 1 John 1 : 1, 2. Galatians 
1: 8, 9. 

" 2. The Roman Pontiflf cannot be vicar of Christ on earth ; 
supreme monarch of the Church ; and infallible teacher ; nor 
can his claim to those attributes be proved by the Holy Scrip- 
tures." 

Those assumptions are blasphemous. Matthew 28: 18. 
13 



146 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

Ephesians 1 : ^1, 23. John 18: 36,37. Matthew 20: 26. Luke 
22: 24-26. 

It would be required of a vicar of Christ, that he should be 
the wisest and holiest of men : but the Papal annalists assure 
us, that the Roman Pontiffs have been flagitious sinners, inef- 
fably beyond the ordinary standard of them who " work ini- 
quity." Baronius, Annal. Eccles., Tom. X., An. 901, Num. 8. 
describes the Vicar of Christ, *' Cluae, tunc facies ecclesiae Romae 1 
Gluam foedissima, &c. What was then the face of Rome ? Most 
filthy," &c. 

Leo in his canon, " Quid autem," reprehends the teachers of 
errors in most pungent style. " Non ad propheticas vocas, &c. 
— discipuli non fuerunt. They were not disciples of the pro- 
phets." 

The canon "Si is," Caus. 2, Gtuest. 3, corroborates the dread- 
ful picture. " Is, qui prseest, &c. anathema sit. He 

who presides, should be anathema." 

La Placette, in his work " De insanabili Roman ae ecclesiae 
scepticismo. The incurable infidelity of the Roman court;" 
Chap. 4, demonstrates ; not only that the Pope is not a true mi- 
nister of the New Testament, but that he is a mere anti-christian 
mummer. The election was often canonically void ; or prior to 
the election there were incurable impediments ; or by sin only 
a false Pope tyrannized, as was notorious in the cases of Nicho- 
las II. and Julius II. ; or the cardinals elected were incapable of 
holding or executing the office, by atheism, infidelity, and 
heresy ; which were the avowed principles of the large majority 
of the profligates who filled the Papal throne and wore the triple 
crown. 

Genebrard, Chron. an. 901, declares, "Seculum, hoc infelix, 

quod per annos 150, Pontifices circiter 50 apostatici, apo- 

tacticive potius quam apostolici, non per ostium, sed per posti- 
cum, — tyrannidem ingrediebantur. During that miserable 
period, 150 years, about fifty Popes, who were apostatical, and 
not apostolical, entered their tyrannical office, not by the open 
way, but by a back door." With this delineation, agree Baro- 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 147 

nius, An. 901, Platina: Life of Silvester III., Pontificatus, &c: 
Onuphrius: Volateran: Guicciardini : Rainald, An. 1492: and 
Varillao, Franc. 1, Livre 1. From all of which evidence, it is 
certain, that there never has been one Pope v^ho was *' a good 
minister of Jesus Christ." 

"3. The Roman Pontiff cannot be the infallible interpreter of 
Scripture and the judge of controversies.'^ 

Many of the most famous Romanists virtually deny the 
Pope's exemption from error. Du Pin in his Antiq. Eccles., 
Dissertat. V., " Quibusdam loqui, &c." and in his Prolegomena, 

" duo majus," &c. ; declares, that the Papal infallibility is 

a false claim. 

Turretin in his Dissertation " De Pyrrhonismo Pontificio,'' 
Sect. 20 ; and Schuzius " De Infallibilitate Pontificum Romanor* 
um," have illustrated the discrepancy of the Papal writers, in a 
very lucid and edifying manner. 

Popes themselves have confessed their o^vn liability to err. 
So did Alexander IV., and Innocent IV., and Clement VI., and 
Urban V. Popes have reversed what their predecessors de- 
creed. John XXII. publicly revoked his heresies before the 
cardinals : "Fatemur, said the hierarch, et credemus, &c., omnia 
submittimus determinationi ecclesise ac successorum nostrum. 
We confess and believe — and submit all to the judgment of the 
Church and our successors." Gregory XL, Paul IV., Cle- 
ment IV., Sextus v., and Clement VIII., with many other 
Popes, made sinfilar acknowledgments ; and the annals of the 
Papacy are replete with instances of the most absolute and direct 
contradictions between the decisions of the Pontiffs upon all 
questions of faith, ceremonies, discipline, and morals. Rainald, 
an. 1351. Baluzius, Vit. Pap. Urban V. Tom. 1. "Postquam 
Urbanus V." &c. Launoius, Part I, Epist. 11. Part III. Epist. 

I, 5, 6. Part IV., Epist. 4. Part V., Epist. 9. Part VI., Epist. 

II, 14. *' Item volumus, &c. said Gregory, volumus pro 

non dictis. We will — ^that it should be considered as not an- 
nounced." 

Pope Adrian VI. exhibits the most convincing demonstration 



148 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

of the general proposition, that the boasted infallibility is an 
imposture. In his Questions, Book X., Article 3, concerning 
confirmation, he thus pronounced : " Certum est, quod Romanus 
Pontifex possit errare, etiam in.iis quae tangant fidem, heresim 
per suam determinationem aut decretalem asserendo ; plures enim 
fuerunt Pontifices Romani heretici. Evacuare intendo impossi- 
bitatem errandi, quam alii assumunt. It is certain, that the 
Roman Pontiff may err in those things which belong to faith, 
and assert heresy .by his decision and decretal ; for many Roman 
Pontiffs were heretics. I propose to make void that impossibi- 
lity of erring w^hich others assert." No Protestant ever denied 
more resolutely the Papal infallibility than Pope Adrian VI. 

Therefore, as many Popes have declared their own fallibility ; 
and have often directly contradicted each other ; and have avowed 
the most heretical doctrines, even according to the judgment of 
the Papists themselves ; it follows, that they who believe that the 
Pope is infallible, must admit that he is infallible even in pal- 
pable errors and fallibility. 

" 4. No confidence can be placed in the decrees of any gene- 
ral council, as the infallible judge of articles of faith.'* 

The truth of this proposition appears in the fact, that none of 
the Romanists can designate where the infallibility is seated. 
The essential characters of an infallible council, according to 
their own demand, cannot certainly be discovered in any eccle- 
siastical assembly. What is a general council ?• Where was 
a canonical council ever held? Was it free from all control? 
Were the intentions of every member without bias and error ? 
Was every one of their decrees rigidly examined and conformed 
to the Scriptures? Is a plurality of suffrages or a perfect una- 
nimity of vote essential ? 

Those subjects are fully determined ; and the pretended infal- 
libility of councils shown to be an imposture by Turretin, *' de 
Pyrrhonismo Pontificio ;" and by La Placette in his " Insanabili 
Romanas ecclesise scepticismo," Cap. IX. X"VI. 

Cardinal Pole, one of the Papal legates to the council of 
Trent, in a work published by order of Pope Pius IV., and An- 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 149 

drasus, who was a member of that assembly, in his Defens. 
Cone. Trident. Lib. l,both have demonstrated, that the Council 
of Trent was fallible. Stapfer de Papismo, Nmn. 341. 

Cardinal Alliacus, Quest. Vespert. Act. 3, thus delineates the 
value of ecclesiastical councils. " Concilium generale, &c., — A 
general council may debase and deform the law of Christ. The 
Roman Church, which is distinguished from the whole congre- 
gation of believers, as a part is from the whole, may be heretics. 
All the multitude of priests and laity may fall from the faith." 

Cardinal Tudeschus, Archbishop of Panormitan, who was at 
the Council of Basl.e, Epist. 7, ad Faverum, thus wrote. " Si 

Papa, &c. If the Pope is moved by reasons and authority 

superior to a council, his opinion should stand ; because a coun- 
cil may err, as they have erred. For in things concerning faith, 
the opinion of one private Christian is preferable to that of the 
Pope, if he is influenced by stronger reasons and authority 
from the Old and New Testaments than the Pope." 

5. The Pope with a council cannot be an infallible judge of 
articles of faith. 

The Pope is fallible, and a council is fallible, but two fallibles 
cannot make one infallible. Either, therefore, the Pope must 
communicate his infallibility to the council, or the council must 
bestow theirs upon the Pope ; but as neither ctf them possess that 
attribute, so neither of them can impart it. 

6. If the Pope is the legitimate successor of Peter, he cannot 
claim and exercise a greater power than Peter ; but as he does 
usurp more authority, he is not Peter's successor. 

Daibert, Caus. I, Gtuest. 7, proves, that as a person cannot 
transfer to another what he does not possess, or give what is not 
his own, so Peter could not bequeath to the Pope that autht)rity, 
which the Lord had not bestowed upon him ; and as the Pope 
arrogates and wields a power which Peter totally disclaimed, 
therefore the Roman Pontiflfis not a succes'^sor of the Apostle, 
but the anti-christian usurper* 

7. The Roman hierarchy, being destitute of the support of 
reason, have sustained themselves by power ; and thus they ex- 

13* 



150 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

hibit, that they are totally different from the Spirit of Christ and 
his Apostles. 

Lactantius Institutes, Book 5, Chap. 20, has given us a 
beautiful descriptive passage. " Religion must be defended, not 
by slaughter, but by admonition ; not by cruelty, but patience ; 
not by wickedness, but faith : for if by blood, and torments, and 
evil, you would defend religion, you only pollute and violate it. 
Nothing is so voluntary as religion ; to which, if the mind of the 
worshipper is adverse, piety is altogether excluded." 

8. That human authority in religion which excludes all 
examination, is contrary to the Divine wisdom and goodness, to , 
the practice of Immanuel and his Apostles, and to the testimony 
of "the Oracles of God;" and as it comprises an intolerable 
despotism over the consciences of men, it is destructive of all 
Christian intelligence, and practical piety. 

From these arguments it is obvious, that Popery is altogether 
incompatible with the dignity of Jehovah, with civil and reli- 
gious liberty, with the paramount claims of God to the service 
of his people, and with the accountability of man to the infinite 
Judge of the quick and the dead. 

The following summary of Romish heresies from Willet's 
" Controversies of religion between the Church of God and the 
Papist s,^^ adverts to the arrogated supremacy and infallibility 
of the Popedom ; and the principal errors w^hich modern Ro- 
manists maintain respecting the Pontifical hierarchy. 

I. Errors concerning the Pope, 

1. There is one chief monarch and exalted bishop over all 
the Church, to decide controversies and preserve unity ; from 
whom all other ecclesiastical officers receive their authority. 

2. Peter was head of the Church and prince of the apostles. 

3. Peter was first bishop of Rome. 

4. The bishops of Rome are lineal successors to Peter, and 
have the same apostolic primacy, authority, and jurisdiction over 
the whole Church, which Peter enjoyed. 

5. The Pope hath authority to ordain, constitute, deprive, and 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 151 

depose other Prelates ; and to receive and decide all appeals. 
He is exempt from all judgment, both of civil governors and 
ecclesiastical councils ; and cannot be deposed from the Papacy. 
The primacy of Rome is derived directly from Christ ; Bellar- 
min de Rom. Pontif, Lib. 2, Cap. 17: "Romani Pontificis 
ecclesiasticum principatum authore Christo, principium acce- . 
pisse, &c. The ecclesiastical primacy of the Roman Pontiff, 
Avas received from Christ; which is verified by his titles of 
Pope, prince of priests, vicar of Christ, head of the Church, 
apostolical prelate, and universal bishop.'' 

6. The Pope cannot err. Bellarmin, Lib. 4,de Pontific. Cap. 13. 
The Roman hierarchy cannot be deceived or depart from the faith. 

7. All external and internal jurisdiction in the Church belongs 
to the Pope. 

8. The Pope is Lord of the virhole Church. Panormitan. 
Concil. Basil. He has power to excommunicate and dethrone 
Emperors and other monarchs. 

9. The Pope is both a temporal and ecclesiastical prince, and 
carries the swords of both jurisdictions. 

10. The Pope possesses three supreme prerogatives. The 
power to dispense with all laws ; exemption from all terrestrial 
jurisdiction ; and equal honor belongs to him as to angels. An- 
tonius in Sum. Major., Pars. 3, Dist. 22, and John de Paris, 
say ; " Papatus est summa virtus creata. The Pontificate is 
the highest power created of God." That claim is illustrated by 
Psalm 8 : 6 — 8, which they thus interpret, and blasphemously 
apply to the Pope. " Sheep and oxen mean men living upon earth ; 
fowls of the air intend angels in heaven ; and fishes, the souls in 
purgatory ; over all which the Pope wields absolute power." 

All those compound errors are at once confuted by the single 
fact, that neither proof nor rational presumption exists, that the 
Apostle Peter ever saw the city of Rome. 

II. Errors concerning the Priesthood, 

1. The people have no connection with the choice of their 
ministers. 



162 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

2. Besides the Pope, cardinals, patriarchs, primates, and pre- 
lates, there are seven inferior ecclesiastical orders. 

3. Prelates are princes over the subordinate orders of eccle- 
siastics. They alone have the right to consecrate and ordain, 
and to give authority to preach. 

4. Entire ecclesiastical jurisdiction is only in the prelates, as 
from them priests receive power to minister, and forgive sins." 

All those deceitful and pernicious errors are so obviously 
anti-christian ; that they can easily be confuted by any Protes- 
tants who are acquainted with evangelical institutions and scrip- 
ture history. 

From these illustrations it is manifest, that the corner stone 
of the Roman Pontificate is the illimitable supremacy of the 
Pope, by which prerogative, he alone is empowered to convene 
councils ; to ratify their decrees ; to ordain prelates ; to enact 
ecclesiastical laws ; to hear appeals ; to correct censures ; to 
bind and loose in every difficulty ; and thus he is the monarch 
of Christians ; and the belief of which inherent sovereign im- 
munities, they affirm to be indispensable to salvation. But that 
position evidently is absurd. It is also contrary to the dignity 
of the Redeemer. The Scriptures denounce it. It was opposed 
in every age, from the primary exhibitions of Prelatical arro- 
gance at Rome, until Leo's triple crown was divested of the 
reverence and dread which previously had been its inherent 
concomitant. 

Through their arrogance, the whole government of the church, 
according to the Gospel, was subverted; the people were des- 
poiled of their inalienable rights ; and the most atrocious enor- 
mities were perpetrated with impunity. 

By various frauds, increasing in boldness, turpitude and 
number, as opposition to the papal authority displayed itself; 
and by transforming every occurrence into a coadjutor to their 
designs, they finally established their odiou^ despotism. 

One of their manoeuvres was a systematic interference in all the 
political affairs of the different European kingdoms. The grand 
object of solicitude was, that the nations should continue in a 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 153 

ceaseless division and contention. All the discordant parties 
professed equally to revere the Roman Pontiff, and to his inter- 
position they all appealed. Hence, every emergency of that 
kind augmented his power ; and by rendering him in universal 
practice, the final Arbitrator of all the royal disputes, the Poten- 
tates elevated him, by their own admissions, to a dignity which 
far transcended their own. Enveloped with all the spiritual 
majesty, in which ignorance and idolatry combined had encir- 
cled God's terrestrial Vicegerent, as he was blasphemously de- 
nominated, measures beyond the ingenuity and power of man 
to contrive, became indispensable to his demolition. As the 
Pope's favour was the principal object of strife, it was disposed 
of, as policy, avarice or ambition dictated. By that cunning, 
peace and war, national prosperity and adversity, equally pro- 
moted the vigor and perpetuity of the mystical Babylon. 

Prior to the tenth century, the Bishops possessed considera- 
ble influence in the regulation of the church, and their sanction 
had been pronounced necessary to authorize the adoption of a 
novel dogma, or a new ceremonial ; but that privilege, if not en- 
tirely abrogated, was so enfeebled, that the voice of those officers 
has subsequently been of little or no importance. In addition 
to that enlargement of the Papal control, the councils, which 
had been either statedly or occasionally assembled in the pro- 
vinces or nations, were disregarded, and the respect which had 
been offered to their decisions declined. Thus the only effec- 
tual barrier to the unrestrained exaltation of him " who sitteth in 
the Temple of God as God," was completely extirpated. By 
those continual accessions of authority, the Popes at length, 
having become inflated with their prosperity, and arrogant be- 
yond all measure, enjoined upon all the devoted agents of the 
apostate Hierarchy, to promulgate the preposterous doctrine, that 
the Bishop of Rome was constituted by Jesus Christ Supreme 
Governor, Legislator, and Judge of the universal church upon 
earth. To those usurpations, however zealously and ardently 
defended, great opposition was excited by various learned per- 
sons who were acquainted with the sacred scriptures, and with 



154 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

the primitive history of the church. Notwithstanding, all their 
resistance was vain; and it became necessary to invent some 
mode, by which so palpable a transformation of the ancient re- 
gimen might be defended. The blindness of the people assisted 
th(^ design, and the absolute independence of the Roman Pon- 
tiff was the unavoidable consequence. A large number of the 
most ingenious and corrupt partizans of the papacy were em- 
ployed to forge public conventions, acts of councils, and de- 
cretal epistles, with similar records ; from which it might be in- 
fallibly demons'x^ated, that in the Apostolic age, and from that 
period to the ninth century, without interruption, the Popes had 
always been clothed with the same supreme spiritual majesty, 
as that in which they were then decorated. With the most os- 
tentatious triumph those fictitious writings were adduced ; espe- 
cially the fabricated proceedings and decisions of a supposititious 
council, alleged to have been held during the fourth century, 
and a pretended donation of Constantino ; Geddes' Tracts, Vol. 4 ; 
one of the most clumsy forgeries extant — which tended in a high 
degree to enrich and aggrandize the papal Hierarchy. 

Whenever it appeared advisable to restore any ancient ob- 
servance, which was adapted to sanctify the pretended rights of 
the Roman church, or to augment the dominion of its Pontiff) 
no scruple was admitted respecting its legality. Hence, those 
ecclesiastical Councils which had in a great measure vanished 
from the other nations, were sometimes held at Rome, because 
there they could be transformed into a body, whose acts would 
subserve the pontifical usurpations. By the operation of that 
sanction, all the spurious decretals, with every other fictitious 
monument and record necessary to consummate the design, 
were incorporated among the ecclesiastical laAvs. " The history 
of those ages verifies, in a multitude of deplorable examples, the 
disorders and calamities which sprung from the ambition of the 
aspiring Pontiffs. Through their impious frauds they over- 
turned the ancient government of the church, undermined the 
pastoral authority, and engrossed the revenues. By aiming 
perfidious blows at the thrones of princes, the Pope endeavoured 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 155 

to lessen their power, and to circumscribe their dominion ; until 
in the twelfth century, not only the claim of terrestrial suprema- 
cy was advanced ; but also assumed and exercised, by Pope Al- 
exander III. who erected Portugal, then a province, into a se- 
parate kingdom, and invested Alphonso with all the dignity and 
external pomp of regal authority." 

Connected with that usurpation, is the pretended Infallibility 
.claimed by the Pope ; combining a supreme Potentate on points 
of jurisdiction, and a Judge from whom no appeal exists on to- 
pics of controversy. This stupendous claim however has al- 
ways been a source of strife. Some writers have deposited the 
celestial attribute in the Pope individually ; many have trans- 
ferred it to a general council ; while others have devolved it 
upon the council and the Pope, in unison. It seems at length 
to have been the decision of a large majority of the disputants, 
that it is the immunity of the Pope to decide the true sense of 
scripture and all articles of faith, because he cannot err. To 
develop the irrationality of that dogma; it is only necessary to 
remember, that among the Popes have been heretics of every 
degree, from Arianism to Atheism — now it is impossible to be- 
lieve that a privilege belonging to God alone, could have been 
communicated to those who blasphemously denied the existence 
of a Deity, and the immortality of the soul. 

" The first article of theology among the Roman priests, and 
the Jesuits, is this ; that there is no God. The second,. that the 
history of Jesus Christ is falsehood and imposture; and the 
third, that a future life and the resurrection of the dead are 
mere fables." 

But they were not erroneous in sentiment only, they were 
most outrageously abominable in practice. During the dark 
ages, and peculiarly for one hundred and fifty years after Pope 
Joan; the *' man of sin," as embodied in the ruler of the Church, 
like the old Dragon his master, manifested all that was. execra- 
ble and infernal. " The Popes, with the college of cardinals, 
and the whole host of the clergy, were abandoned to all kinds of 
impurity, and to every species of enormity and crime, so that 



156 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

they resembled monsters rather than men ; and instead of being 
head of all the churches, she is not worthy to be accounted one 
of the smallest toes of the Church's feet." If this be insufficient 
to abrogate the claim of the pretended successor of Peter, a third 
fact must for ever obliterate it ; more than one Pope has existed 
at the same time. On a variety of occasions, two and three 
Popes have exercised that appalling power ; anathematizing 
each other and their mutual adherents, with the same acrimony 
which they evinced towards those witnesses who prophesied in 
sackcloth. All the ten horns of the beast having thus been infal' 
libly and simultaneously accursed ; and "filling Europe with 
the misery of their contentions." To those considerations, may 
be added the wondrous discrepancies among the Popes in suc- 
cession ; so that one has annulled the canons which his predeces- 
sor decreed ; thus establishing an infallibility of palpable con- 
tradictions. 

The pleas on behalf of the infallibility of councils are equally 
mvalid ; for it is the incontestable deduction, certified by the pro- 
ceedings and decisions of almost every large assembly, collected 
for ecclesiastical purposes of jurisdiction and legislation, since 
the period w^hen Constantino became sole undisputed master of 
the ancient Roman empire, that the principles of corruption 
are inherent in those bodies ; and that- with few exceptions, the 
same motives impel them which originally engendered the " mo- 
ther of abominations." Whether therefore we scrutinize the pre- 
tensions of the Popes alone, or of councils only, or of both those 
would be " Lords of God's Heritage" in conjunction, we arrive 
at the same conclusion ; that they are intruders upon Imman- 
uel's inalienable prerogative, as the sovereign judge of all. It 
hence follows, that the fundamental position, by which all the 
apostacy is defended, is without the shadow of reality. A uni- 
versal visible Church is merely an imaginary phantom. Even 
were it an existing body, the bishop of Rome can offer no claim 
to be its head. The office itself, of Pope is an irrational, " un- 
scriptural, and very pernicious usurpation, a most audacious 
and impious assumption ; which distinctly avows, that the Re- 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 157 

deemer is either absent from his people, or negligent of their 
interests, or is incompetent to supply and protect them." What 
a daring impostor thus to nullify the Mediator's ofRce, and the 
Saviour's promise! As to the pretext of an impossibility of 
error in decision ; infallibility is needless in itself, contrary to 
our state of probation, renders the gospel ministry an unneces- 
sary institution ; and would be of no use, unless all the disciples 
of the infallible judge were endowed with the same liberation 
from ignorance and error. When with these considerations, 
we connect the discord between the Popes, the impossibility of 
determining who possesses that mysterious authority, and the 
certainty that those pretenders to infallibility, Popes and coun- 
cils, have in every age almost uniformly departed from the 
** Scripture of truth," like the Apostle John we are ready to 
"wonder with great admiration," at the sight of this "Mystery, 
Babylon the Great, who reigneth over the kings of the earth." 
The depression of the civil authorities, and the ecclesiastical 
supremacy over all the sovereign powers within the dominion 
of the ten horns, were the grand machinations by which the 
dragon's representative, the Beast, secured and maintained his 
exaltation. To the meanest official adherent of the Papacy, 
merely as such, was attached a dignity, superior to that of the 
most magnificent civil potentate. As a regular deduction from 
that haughty rebellious dogma, the Pope decreed for them a 
total exemption from all jurisdiction in the common courts of 
judicature. One of the arguments used to prove that position, 
was derived from the Mosaic law : " thou shalt not plow with 
an ox and an ass." Those in spiritual orders were oxen ; while 
the laity w^ere asses ; and consequently, it was a degradation for 
a father confessor to acknowledge his own criminalities before a 
temporal tribunal. Hence, it is an authoritative decision among 
the Papists, which has often been practically exemplified, that 
" rebellion against the national power, is not treason in a Popish 
priest, because he is not subject to its sway." However much 
circumstances oblige its partizans to conceal this ungodly prin- 
ciple in modern ages ; the doctrine is still maintained in this 
14 



158 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY, 

Union ; so that Popery is ever one and the same, an incurable 
pestilence to the world. The inference dra^vn by the early Re* 
formers is therefore incontrovertible ; that a thorough bigoted 
Papist cannot be a good citizen; because he is bound by a 
foreign allegiance, paramount to the claim and law of the lani 
in which he resides. 

The doctrine established by the Lateran council in 1215, that 
Popes possess authority to depose the executive authorities, 
to absolve the people from their oaths and obligations, to disposr 
sess the civil governors of their offices, and by force to subject 
the nations to tyrants of their own nomination ; has often been 
illustrated by actual example in the history of the ten horns of 
the beast. One modern instance is too impressive, not to be cur- 
sorily noticed. In the attempt at Naples in 1821, to obtain "the 
Rights of Man," it is probable, that the same '' un-Holy Al- 
liance," who had previously despoiled, devastated, and dismem- 
bered Poland, would not so speedily and effectually have 
crushed the rising temple of freedom, had not the intimidations 
and bulls of the tenant of the Vatican, " the Beast who hath two 
horns like a lamb, and who spake as a dragon," debilitated the 
energies and decomposed the unity of the patriots, by rousing 
all their superstitious alarms of excommunication here, and 
beyond the grave, their dread of purgatory and* wo everlastings 
The mystery is not that Pope Pius YII. blasphemously arroga-' 
ted that attribute of the God-head ; but that a Protestant monarch, 
a Popish Emperor, and a Greek Czar, a trio naturally and essen- 
tially discordant, should combine and claim the unhallowed 
co-operation of Satan's grand visible terrestrial vicegerent, to 
consummate their schemes of despotism, and their opposition to 
the progressive melioration of the besotted devotees of the anti- 
christian apostacy, is a contradiction, which can be compre- 
hended only by the recollection ; that ambition transforms its 
desires into necessities, that royalty sanctifies every crime how- 
ever enormous, and that the variance between Herod and 
Pontius Pilate was removed only by the scorn and crucifixion 
of Immanuel. 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 159 

Nothing is more agreeable and acceptable to the votaries of 
vice, than the Papal system in its actual operation. Heathen 
and anti-christian Rome are identical. The former was orio-i- 

o 

nally an asylum for outlaws, a refuge for profligates, and the 
residence of ruffians. The latter is a sanctuary for the aban- 
doned of every possible class. The ancient metropolis was 
built on fratricide for its corner stone, Romu 'US having slain his 
brother Remus. Popery was authoritatively erected upon the 
murder of the Emperor Mauritius — for the usurper Phocas, who 
butchered the whole imperial family, expiated his aggravated 
iniquity by the establishment of the Man of Sin, as a commuta- 
tion for his slaughter, and as a compensation for Papal abso- 
lution. 

The Roman apostacy commenced in bloodshed and violence, 
and it is indebted for its existence to the same diabolical machi- 
nation. Like its sister imposture invented at Mecca, it has 
augmented its disciples, principally by force. The Arabian 
Apollyon employed the sword and military coercion. Fagots 
and fire wer^ the instruments of conversion introduced by *' him 
who sitteth in the temple of God, as God." Compulsion and 
cruelty have augmented the disciples of the Western Anti- 
christ ; so that oaths and covenants are phantoms, when their 
rage is to be exercised upon a denounced heretic. Persecution 
is an essential characteristic of the Papacy, and so revengeful is 
its temper, that if it can glut its revenge with blood, by no other 
means, it will exercise its insatiable appetite, even on its own 
deluded votaries ; of which, the murder of every Frenchman 
in the Island of Sicily, when the bells rang for evening prayer, 
affords a modern and memorable testimony. Hence it may be 
added, in the language of a late distinguished opponent of 
Popery, " he who can choose such a religion, deserves to be 
bound within its grasp, that it may be his punishment, as well 
as his crime." 

Oneiof the most inexplicable of all the inquiries connected with 
this subject is this ; how men so scandalously outrageous and vile, 
as were a large majority of the Popes, such proverbially profli- 



160 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

gate, profane, impious, lewd murderers, that they have no 
counterpart in society except among the cardinals, and the chief 
retainers of the apostacy : could have been supported during so 
long a period ? One solution only can be adduced — the univer- 
sal degeneracy inclined all orders of the people *' to embrace 
evil doctrines, and to engage in false- worship ;" while the easy 
commutation for th 3ir transgressions by means of auricular con- 
fession, penance, and the tax for absolution, united their energies 
to maintain a system, which indulged their vicious propensities 
to the widest range, and quieted their consciences by the guaran- 
tee of pardon, security and peace. 

In the more extended examination of the past ages of the 
Popish predominance, it is manifest that the greatest enemies, 
the most discordant purposes, and the most conflicting events, 
by the ceaseless cunning, and artifices, and exertions of the 
hierarchs and their agents, lost their contradictory qualities, and 
were combined into one machine, whose perpetual motion inva- 
riably tended to the same object ; the exaltation of the " Man of 
Sin." Some of the dignified orders of society succumbed to the 
Papal claims from superstitition ; others from servility ; many 
from expediency ; and the majority from terror. Its long pro- 
tracted elevation and supremacy may also partly be attributed 
to policy. " Princes and Emperors, that they themselves might 
attain to more arbitrary sway, suffered the clergy to use their 
liberty to an excess. They often needed their assistance, and 
found it necessary to indulge, and permit them to tyrannize in 
spiritual causes, that they might exercise temporal despotism ; 
until they could not restrain them from usurping the civil 
power." But that connivance and aid would have been insuf- 
ficient to fortify so stupendous an edifice of every diversified evil, 
which like the " smoke out of the bottomless pit, darkened the 
sun and the air," had not the forced and unnatural celibacy of 
the priests, who wero dispersed throughout the ten horns of the 
beast, imbodied around the Pope, a universal and incalculable 
army of inseparable adherents ; whose licentiousness, luxury, 
and pride, could not otherwise have been satiated ; and had not 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 161 

those same monks and friars obtained paramount and irresistible 
influence over all descriptions of the people, from the highest to 
the lowest, through each intermediate grade, by being the autho- 
rized depositaries of every individual's character, secrets, and 
reputation, in consequence of the information imparted at private 
confession. The grand support of the Romish apostacy, however, 
eonsivSted in the facility with which the majority of the people in 
the various nations imbibed those erroneous doctrines that 
sanctioned their depraved inclinations, and in their attachment 
to that pompous ceremonial which rendered their supposititious 
devotions a sensual gratification. Like their Babylonish ances- 
tors, they would have worshipped any pageant exalted before 
them. " At what time the Chaldeans heard the sound of the 
cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of 
music, they fell down and worshipped the image which was set 
up" by Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel 3 : 5. Thus splendor and 
music, imagery and mummery, excite the infatuation of the igno- 
rant and priest-ridden modern Babylonians. " All ranks and 
degrees of persons club their quota to support the Romish delu- 
sions, and every one contributes his earnings, in different pro- 
portions, to manufacture the Papal golden calf 

That all ranks of men should combine to support so mon- 
strous an anomaly as the Pontifical hierarchy, is to the highest 
degree astonishing. Emperors, kings, and princes, with their 
inferior ministers, all united, and almost without cessation, to 
uphold that odious and deadly despotism. The watchmen upon 
the walls of Zion became sensual, stupid, and supine. To gra- 
tify their unhallowed passions by unrestrained indulgence, and 
to delight their senses with pomp and amusing ceremonial exhi- 
bitions, the multitudes of the common people joined their energies 
to maintain a system, which substituted the form for the sub- 
stance, and "the pageantry of devotion" for internal sanctity. 
Thus evangelical doctrine gradually was corrupted. The 
morals of society degenerated. Papal usurpations extended to 
their widest possible boundary. " From the daughter of Zion 
14* 



162 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

all her beauty departed;" and the once "faithful city is become 
a harlot!" Isaiah 1: 21. 

After this undeniably accurate delineation of the Papal claims 
and corruptions, which demonstrate, that so far from the Roman 
priesthood being the ministry of Christ, they are " false prophets 
who bring in damnable heresies," and anti-christs who deny 
the Father and the Son ; it is not a little marvellous, that so 
many of the Reformed Churches who have " come out of Baby- 
lon," are constant^ deducing and sustaining their right to 
administer evangelical ordinances, solely or chiefly by a pre- 
tended transfer of apostolic jurisdiction through the successive 
generations of the spurious descendants from the mother of harlots 
to the present generation. That self-contradictory hypothesis 
is the cardinal delusion of Popery : and to its continuous influ- 
ence, or rather sway, may be imputed many of those absurdities 
in which controvertists become entangled, when they enter the 
arena to prostrate the Jesuits. If it is only admitted, that in its 
present organization, the Papal hierarchy since the sixth cen- 
tury, have constituted a part of the true Church ; and that the 
"authority to preach the word of God, and to minister the holy 
sacraments," is derived by regular succession from antiquity ; 
then the Papal dignity and anti-christian jurisdiction are settled 
upon an immoveable basis, and are impregnably fortified against 
every assault of reason, conscience, and Scripture. The fact, 
that so many of the Protestant ministers thus hanker aj3;er the 
unhallowed pomp and priestly influence of the Roman apostacy, 
comprises the only true solution of the otherwise inexplicable 
mystery, that multitudes of the nominal Reformed Churches 
and preachers either discountenance, or oppose, every well di- 
rected and vigorous eflfort to exterminate the lawless power of the 
beast and the false prophet. They clearly perceive, that if " the 
great Babylon," that the modern Nebuchadnezzar hath "built 
for the house of his kingdom, by the might of his power and for 
the honor of his majesty," be captured — and that if the modern 
Belshazzar is not permitted any longer to lift up himself 
" against the Lord of heaven ; and to praise the gods of silver, 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 163 

and g'old, or brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor 
hear, nor know" — that then a modern Daniel will point to some 
servant of the Lord, the predictions respecting the faithful dis- 
ciples of Christ in ecclesiastical bondage, and instantly the 
"proclamation will be made throughout all the kingdom, to 
build the house of the Lord God of Israel," and the disenthralled 
churches will resound, " Blessed is he who cometh in the name 
of the Lord to preach the acceptable year of the Lord ; Hosanna 
in the highest !" 

A condensed summary of the principal objections against the 
Romish anti-christian system will properly close this concise re- 
view. The Papal Hierarchy has no sanction or authority for 
its existence in the sacred oracles, except in the awful condem- 
natory denunciations with which it is always delineated. Dan- 
iel, Paul, and John, clearly describe and unequivocally condemn 
it, from its primary evolution, when " the mystery of iniquity" 
first began to work, until its final tragic and irrecoverable catas- 
trophe. By its operation, the essential principles of individual 
religion are demolished ; for it denies salvation to all who do not 
practice the Popish superstitious ritual. It expunges the right 
of private examination and judgment on all literary, moral, and 
religious topics. It " prohibits liberty of mind, speech, writing 
and printing ; and defends its unholy and terrific dogmas by 
chains, dungeons, tortures, and flames. It debases the soul and 
character of man ; and is the unceasing, implacable foe of edu- 
cation, science, improvement, and reason. It spreads over the 
whole frame of society, the net of cherished ignorance and ab- 
ject submission" — combining the most solemn exterior of " sanc- 
tity, with crimes, the atrocity of which would make even a sa- 
vage to shudder ;" and engendering the most obdurate and un- 
impressible infidelity and ir religion. Absurd, pernicious and 
unscriptural doctrines are enjoined as articles of faith by the 
Beast of Babylon ; who also enacts laws and ordinances, both of 
discipline and worship, by his own usurped authority ; denoun- 
cing the irrevocable anathema, and the torments of the everlast- 
ing abyss of wo, upon all those who deny his assumed claims, 



164 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

and who refuse to submit to his unhallowed government and 
mandates. 

The objections to ecclesiastical councils as an essential part 
of the anti-christian system are equally valid as the opposition 
to the sole official predominance of the Roman Pontiff. Mo- 
sheim forcibly illustrates the inevitable tendency which there is 
even in Christians, to arrogate immunities that the Lord Jesus 
has not conferred upon any of his servants. He thus clearly 
describes the origin and direful consequences of those pestiferous 
papal machines. 

*' During a great part of the second century, the churches 
were independent of each other ; nor were they joined together 
by association, confederacy, or any other bonds but those of 
charity. Each assembly was a little state, governed by its own 
laws ; which were either enacted, or at least approved of, by the 
society. But in process of time, all the Christian churches of a 
province were formed into one large ecclesiastical body ; which, 
like confederate states, assembled at certain times, in order to 
deliberate about the common interests of the whole. That in- 
stitution had its origin among the Greeks ; but in a short time 
it became universal ; and similar assemblies were formed in all 
places where the gospel had been planted. Those assemblies, 
which consisted of the deputies from several churches, were 
called Synods by the Greeks, and Councils by the Latins ; and 
the laws enacted in those general meetings were called canons, 
or rules. Those councils, of w^hich we find not the smallest 
trace before the middle of the second century, changed the face 
of the whole church, and gave it a new form ; for by them the 
ancient privileges of the people were considerably diminished, and 
the power and authority of the bishops were greatly augmented. 
The humility indeed, and the prudence of those pious prelates, 
hindered them from assuming at once, the power with w^hich 
they were afterwards invested. At their first appearance in 
those general councils, they acknowledged that they were no 
more than the delegates of their respective churches ; and that 
they acted in the name and by the appointment of their people 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 165 

But they soon changed that humble tone; imperceptibly ex- 
tended the limits of their authority ; turned their influence into 
dominion, and their counsels into laws ; and at length openly 
asserted, that Christ had empowered them to prescribe to his 
people authoritative rules of faith and mannersP 

We have already been reminded of some of those anti-chris* 
tain appointments — ecclesiastical officers and orders either un* 
known or expressly opposed to the gospel of Jesus ; the canoni- 
zation and beatification of the dead ; and the establishment of 
numberless feasts and fasts, carnivals and macerations; with a 
most tiresome and appalling catalogue of frivolous mummeries, 
all tending to insult common sei^e, and burlesque Christianity. 
Hence, it is demonstrable, that the importance, usefulness and 
necessity of divine revelation are totally superseded by the papal 
vain traditions. Besides, the Roman hierarchy encourages 
the vilest despotism of every species ; for it prostrates reason and 
conscience, and consequently fosters the most absolute private 
and public tyranny. Those facts are evinced by their excom- 
munications, auricular confession, monastic institutions, the pre- 
tended rights of the church, dogmatic proscriptions, and by 
their ceaseless and tremendous persecutions. The " Mother of 
Harlots is drunken with the blood of the Saints, and with the 
blood of the martyrs of Jesus." Revelation 17: 6. 

" The Romish infallibility," says a perspicacious writer, "is 
like the cope-stone which crowns all the rest of their errors and 
absurdities ; or like the hand of iron and brass which holds them 
together ; so that not one of them, whether great or small, can 
ever be shaken or loosed, without destroying the whole fabric. 
It unites indissolubly all the past, the present, and the future, 
into one ; and necessarily makes the faith of the whole, the faith 
of every part, and the public creed that of every individual. It 
is an insuperable bar in the way of reformation. It precludes 
every idea of change. It makes a retractation of any error once 
embraced impossible. Whatever has passed the mint, and re- 
ceived the indelible impression, becomes ever after like a law of 
the Modes and Persians, which altereth not. Hence, Popery 



166 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

always is and ever must be the same. If its principles at any 
time have been dangerous, seditious, or treasonable, they must 
still continue identical. The Roman hierarchy can neither re- 
form themselves, nor be reformed. That which they cannot do 
for themselves, none of the whole body can effect, and conse- 
quently the Papacy must be destroyed." 

Therefore, the Court of Rome and their impious tyrannical 
system, are a manifestly audacious innovation upon the gospel of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and destructive of all the 
fundamental principles of true religion : for the Scriptures as- 
sert, " the sole legislative authority and supremacy of Immanuel 
over the faith and consciences of men ; the unrestricted use of 
the sacred volume, and its sufficiency as the rule of belief and' 
obedience ; and the unlawfulness of human dictation in matters" i 
belonging only to the responsibility of man to his Judge, and the- 
salvation of the soul by Him alone, " who is over all, God blessed-' 
for ever." '-^ 

In addition to the preceding condensed narrative, ten separate 
concise illustrations of the principal topics which are connected? 
with the papal hierarchy are subjoined. 

I. Temporal Supremacy of the Roman Pontiffs. The 
temporal supremacy of the Roman court has always been main^i 
tained by Papal canonists, synods and councils. It is requisite 
to verify the proposition. 

Gregory VII. and his council issued " twenty-seven se7iten- 
ces,^^ which are called "dictatus papse," papal dictates; in 
which it is said : — " The Pope ought to be called the Universal 
Bishop. All princes ought to kiss his feet. He has power to 
depose emperors and kings." Richer. Hist. Concil. Vol. 10. 
Lib. 1. Binius. Onuphrius, Vit. Greg. VII. 

Baronius asserts — " Sententias eas, &c. Those opinions 
were always received in the Church, by which the audacity of 
schismatical princes rising against the Roman Court may be re- 
pressed." Annal. an. 1076. Greg. Epist. 25, Lib. 7. 

Clement II. declares — *' To the Romish Church every knee 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 167 

must bow of things on earth. At my pleasure the door of hea- 
ven is opened and shut." Bamberg. Chronic. 

Innocent III. proclaims — ** The church my spouse hath given 
me a dowry, spiritualium plenitudinem, et latitudinem tempora- 
lium ; the mitre in token of things spiritual for the priesthood, 
and the crown in token of the temporal for the kingdom ; making 
me the lieutenant of the King of kings and Lord of lords. I 
enjoy alone the plenitude of power, that others may say of me 
next to God, out of his fulness have we received !" — Itinerar. Ital. 
Pars. 2, Coron. Rom. Pontiff 

In his bull to John III. king of England, the same Pope says 
■^** Those provinces which anciently were subject to the Roman 
Church in spirituals, are now become subject to it in temporals." 
Epist. lib. 16. Ep. 131. 

Pope Innocent also told Richard of England — " I hold the 
place of God upon earth to punish the men and nations who pre- 
sume to oppose my commands." Gervas. Cliron. Scrip, p. 1623. 

Clement VII. wrote to Charles VI. king of France in this 
language — " As there is but one God in heaven, so there cannot 
nor ought to be but one God on earth." Froissard, Vol. 3, p. 147. 

Bellarmin and the Canonists blasphemously ascribe the names 
and power of Christ to the Pope. " Nomina omnia quae tribu- 
Untur Christo. eadem et pontifici. All the names of Christ be- 
long to the Pope." Bellarmin de Cone. lib. 2, cap. 17. Dist. 96, 
Canon 7. Decret. Greg. Lib. 1, Tit. 7. 

In the council held at Rome, 1076, by Pope Gregory VII., it 
was decreed — *' The Pope shall deprive the emperor of his 
crown ; absolve all the princes and members of the empire from 
their oaths to him ; and prohibit any communication with him." 
The sentence was instantly executed. The same anathema was 
repeated. by another council, convened by Pope Pascal II., at 
Rome, in 1102. The emperor Frederick ^vas excommunicated 
by the coujicil of Lyons under Pope Innocent IV., and all his 
faithful adherents were included in the same sentence. That 
sentence was denounced with bell, book, and lighted candles, 
by the Pope himself; who first extinguished his light, and 



168 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

the others followed in order, thereby expressing their curse, 
that the emperor should be sent into the blackness of darkness. 
Not less than thirty -one councils held in France and Italy, prior 
to the Reformation, asserted the same persecuting authority. 

The ensuing remarkable fact verifies, that the modern Pa- 
pists coincide with their ancestors in reference to the power of 
the Pope. After the murder of Henry IV. of France, an oath 
was proposed, to abjure the doctrine that it is lawful for the 
Pope to dethrone arid assassinate kings, and absolve their sub- 
jects from the oath of fidelity. Cardinal Perron, and all the 
grandees of Ihe Roman hierarchy in France remonstrated, in 
the year 1616; and maintained that according to the principles 
of Popery, the Pope had power to command the people to rebel 
and destroy their excommunicated prince. Among other argu- 
ments, the Cardinal stated to the Tiers Etat, which was the 
last time that they assembled, until the commencement of the 
great French revolution — " Such an oath, that it is unlawful 
to assassinate rulers and to release citizens from their allegiance, 
cannot be taken without acknowledging that the Pope and the 
whole Church had erred both in faith and in things pertaining to 
salvation. The taking of such an oath involves both heresy and 
schism^ — ^for to take that oath is a full confession that the Cath- 
olic Church had perished for many ages from the earth. What 
greater trophy can we erect for the heretic Huguenots, than to 
avow that the kingdom of Christ on earth had perished, and that 
for^many ages altogether, there has been the universal reign of 
anti-christ, the s^magogue of Satan and the spouse of the Devil." 
Hist, du Droit Eccles. Franc. Tom. 2. page 346. — Politique du 
clerge de France, page 216. Perron Opuscul. page 600. 

Those principles may receive additional confirmation from 
other testimony. Pope Stephen V. asserts — " Such as will not 
be obedient to the Roman Pontiff, eos excommunicando excom- 
rounicat, maledicendo maledicit, et perpetuo anathematis vinculo 
insolubiliter colligat — ^they are declared to be excommunicated, 
accursed, bound with the anathema, and delivered over to eternal 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY, 169 

According to Pope Nicholas 1., the Decretals annouacerr— 
that those who violate the canons voluntarily, or speak evil of 
them, or favour those who so act, blaspheme the Holy Spirit. If 
the Decretals are not received, neither will the Holy Scriptures. 
By the decree of Pope Innocent, we are obliged to receive the 
Old and New Testaments ; and for the same reason, the Decre- 
tals ought to be received as well as the Scripture, because a de- 
cree of Pope Leo and another rescript of Pope Gelasius con- 
firm them." There is a decree in the Corpus Juris Canonici, 
which expressly ranks the pontifical rescripts and decretals 
among the Canonical Scriptures. The nineteenth distinction of 
the canon in Canonicis, bears these inscriptions — Cap. 1. 
** Decretales epistolse vim auctoritatis habent. The Decretals 
have the force of authority. Cap. 2. Omnes sanctiones apos- 
tolicse sedis irrefragabiliter sunt observandse. All the decretals 
of Rome are to be observed without objection : tanquam ipsius 
divini Petri voce firmatsB sint ; as if they had been established 
by the voice of Peter." The third, fourth and fifth chapters 
enforce the prior rules. Cap. 6. " Inter canonicas Scripturas 
decretales epistolse connumerantur ? The Decretals are reck- 
oned among the Canonical Scriptures.'''' That doctrine is cor- 
roborated by Distinct. 20. Cap. 2, which thus enacts — " Corri- 
piendi sunt qui deer eta Romanorum Pontificum non habent, vel 
non observant. All Papists who do not know and obey the de- 
cretals must be punished. Si decreta Romanorum pontificum 
non habetis de neglectu atque incuria estis arguendi. Si viro 
habetis et non observatis, de temeritate estis corripiendi et incre- 
pandi. If you have not the Pope's decretals, you must be cen- 
sured for neglect and indifference ; if you have them and do not 
observe them, you are to be reproved and chastised." 

All the preceding blasphemy and tyrannical usurpations, 
with every other similar impiety and corruption which always 
have been and now are universally practised throughout the 
dominions of the Roman Pontiff, are solemnly sealed as infalli- 
ble and irreversible Popery. The last edition of the Papal ec- 
clesiastical code was issued by tjie command pf Pope Gregory 
15 



170 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

XIII. ; and to it is prefixed his bull. " Gregorius XIII. Ad fu- 
turam rei memoriam ; or the everlasting memorial of the mat- 
ters." In that rescript, Gregory expressly declares ; that " his 
design in causing the former editions of the Corpus Juris Can- 
onici to be revised, corrected and amended, was for ever after to 
preserve the Papists in the true Roman faith ; and to remove 
from them every occasion of wandering out of the way." Hence, 
it follows that all which is contained and enjoined in the canon 
law, respecting faith or morals, is the true authentic doctrine of 
the Romish community. Rainald. An. 1351. Decret. Pars, 
1 Dist. 19. Caus. quest. 1. 

II. Papal Exactions. Earthly dominion requires riches, 
and the ambition, magnificence, and avarice of the Pontifical 
hierarchy advanced with equal progression. All their move- 
ments, and the various changes in their doctrines, ceremonies, 
discipline, and government, were contrived to enhance power or 
increase wealth. Every innovation was merely an additional 
mode to tax their votaries under the name and forms of reliofion, 
until a large proportion of the national possessions in Europe 
was at the Pope's disposal. An accurate idea may be formed 
of the immense sums of money which were constantly flowing 
towards Rome, when we consider, that there was a constant 
traffic in images, purgatory, relics, pilgrimages, indulgences, 
jubilees, canonizations, miracles, masses, tithes, annats, Peter's 
pence, investitures, appeals, reservations, bulls, and expectatives, 
which ever drained the impoverished people. The manufacture 
of a new saint costs 100,000 crownis. An archbishop's pall, a 
small white woollen rag not worth five cents, costs about 5500 
dollars — ^but in the year 1250, the Archbishop of York paid 
1000 pounds for the pall ; which, reckoning the difference in the 
value of money, would amount to nearly 500,000 dollars. In 
reference to that foolery, the poet Baptist Mantuan said : 

" Si quid Roma dabit, nugas dabit, accipit aurum, :^' 

Verba dat : heu Romse nunc sola pecunia regnat. . J^ 

Rome gives trifles, and words ; and receives gold* \ 

Money alone rules at Rome. ^^ 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 171 

The money thus drained from the various nations, by the 
Papal robbers, called priests and friars, amounted to almost 
double of all the other national expenditures. The harvest at 
Rome was in exact proportion to the credulity, superstition, and 
wickedness of mankind. It is, therefore, easily understood, how 
much those profitable delinquencies would be encouraged, and 
how eagerly such capital stock would be improved by those, 
who traded in the Popish merchandize of " the souls of men." 
Revelation 18: 11-13. Ridley's life of Ridley. Hist, du droit 
Eccles., France, Tom. 2, Page 293. Puffendorf Introd. Hist. 
Europ. Cap. 12. 

But the most interesting passage upon the subject of the 
Papal robberies, is found in the Chronolog. Hist, of the Abbas 
Urspergensis. It is an address several hundred years old, " to 
the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth" — and could 
not be surpassed in caustic sarcasm, by any sturdy anti-Papist 
even of the sixteenth century, or of the present day in the United 
States. " Gaude mater nostra Roma, &c., said the old Abbot, 
Rejoice, Mother Rome, because the flood-gates of earthly trea- 
sures are opened, and the streams and hills of wealth copiously 
flow to thee. Exult in the iniquity of men, because as the re- 
compense of so many evils, the price is given to thee. Be joy- 
ful over thy helper, Discord, who has come from the bottom of 
the infernal abyss, that much wealth might be accumulated for 
thee. Thou now hast what thou hast always thirsted for ; shout 
aloud thy song, because thou hast conquered the world, not by 
thy religion, but through human wickedness. Not devotion 
and conscience, but the perpetration of innumerable sins, and 
the decision of quarrels purchased at thy price, draw men to 
thee." Conrad. Abb. Urspergensis. 

III. The Crusades. By the artifices of the Roman Court, 
and the superstitious mania of the European nations, eight dif- 
ferent expeditions were directed against the Saracens. The 
history of those croisades, which were so denominated from the 
sign of the cross that those fanatical marauders wore, comprises 
one of the most astonishing proofs of the liability of the human 



172 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

mihd to be crazed by a sudden fantastic excitement ; and is also 
irrefragable evidence of the transcendent height of the Papal 
supremacy, which they powerfully aided both to increase and 
consolidate. 

After the Mohammedans, during nearly four centuries, had 
retained undisturbed possession of the Eastern part of the ancient 
Roman empire, a plan was formed to recover the land of Judea 
from the Arabians. It was declared reproachful to the Christian 
nations, that the enemies of the cross should rule over the 
country hallowed by the birth, ministry, passion, and triumph of 
Immanuel ; and it was pronounced just and necessary in the 
nominal professors of Christianity, to retort upon the Moslems 
the injuries and calamities with which the Eastern believers in 
Jesus had been tortured by their desolating conquerors. The 
first effort Avas made about the year 1000 by Pope Silvester ; but 
his attempts to inflame the European nations against the Moham- 
medans, at that period, was nugatory. Afterwards, Pope Gre- 
gory YIL, the most audacious tyrant who ever ruled either in 
Church or State, resolved in person to conduct a war for the 
extension of the Roman ecclesiastical dominion in Asia. Poli- 
tical occurrences having forced him to postpone the execution of 
his design ; it remained dormant until the year 1093, when all 
Europe was almost instantaneously electrified to the utmost ele- 
vation of enthusiastic rage, by the preaching and exertions of 
Peter the Hermit. He had witnessed the agonies and indigni- 
ties to Avhich the pilgrims who visited Jerusalem Avere continu- 
ally subject. On his return to Constantinople, he had ineffec- 
tually invoked the interference of the Patriarch there, and also 
at Rome, of Urban then Pope. Instead of feeling any discour- 
agement at their repulses, he began to peregrinate through all 
the countries of Europe, inciting a holy war against the infidels ; 
and pretended to exhibit a letter from heaven, addressed to all true 
Christians, to deliver their brethren, galled by Mohammedan 
oppressions. Thus was formed and prepared the bold and appa- 
rently impracticable design, to conduct into Asia, even from the 
utmost western extremities of Europe, a force sufficient to extir- 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY? 173 

pate, and for ever to exclude the sanguinary devotees of the Im- 
postor of Mecca from the land of Judea. 

When the epidemic madness thus excited, had raged during 
a short season, and a universal, simultaneous, and most vehe- 
ment desire was exhibited for the conquest of Palestine, and the 
carnage of its infidel inhabitants ; Pope Urban discovering that 
all the materials were ready prepared for the long meditated ex- 
pedition, assembled at Placentia, in 1095, a council consisting 
of more than three hundred thousand persons ; on which occa- 
sion. Urban and Peter endeavored with all their zeal and inge- 
nuity to excite the multitudes to the conflict. After a short 
interval, a second and more numerous assembly was held at 
Clermont, which included a large proportion of the princJ| 
prelates, and nobles, resident within the ten horns of the beast. 
Urban and the Hermit there renewed their inflammatory ap- 
peals to the infuriated passions of the people, until at length the 
whole assembly, as if impelled by an irresistible simultaneous 
energy, exclaimed, " It is the will of God !" Those words be- 
came afterwards the signal of battle, while the cross was the 
distinctive badge, which every volunteer in the cause wore, both 
for his ornament and protection. 

Ignorance and superstition at that period were so profound, 
that aided by the private military spirit which was universally 
extended, " all Europe was torn from its foundation, and seemec 
ready to precipitate itself in one united body upon Asia." The 
discontented nobles, the oppressed artisans, the impoverished 
peasants, and the restless monks, all enrolled themselves for that 
service ; to decline which was infamy, being branded as coward- 
ly and impious. A consideraHe proportion of the most valu- 
able European possessions, lands, houses, gold and silver, was 
transferred to the Church ; either as bequests in case of death, or 
as a commutation for the pardon and guarantee of heaven, which 
the Pope and his agents assured to all who died during the crois- 
ade. " Old and young, men and women, priests and soldiers, 
monks and merchants, peasants and mechanics, all eagerly as- 
sumed the cross, as an expiation for all crimes.'' AH the pre- 
15* 



174 rTHE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

paUatory arrangements having been completed, a motley half 
crazy multitude of 300,000 enthusiastic bigots, commenced their 
desolating pilgrimage, " during the course of which the most 
enormous disorders were committed by men inured to wicked- 
ness, encouraged by example, and impelled by necessity." Com- 
manded by Peter the Hermit, they proceeded towards Constanti- 
nople ; and trusting to Heaven for supernatural supplies, as they 
had made no provision for their subsistence on their route, "were 
finally obliged to obtain by plunder, that which they vainly ex- 
pected from a ceaseless miracle." That pillage enraged the inha- 
bitants of the different countries through which they travelled, 
until they eventually assailed the disorderly licentious multitude, 
Aid slaughtered myriads of them almost without resistance. 
The more disciplined forces followed ; and having passed the 
straits of Constantinople, united with the others, and encamped 
on the plains of Asia, an army of 700,000 croisading warriors. 

The rage for the conquest of Judea continued during nearly 
two centuries, and involved eight successive croisades. Two 
millions of people are calculated to have perished in those vari- 
ous attempts to overthrow the Mohammedans in Judea. 

The conduct which those croisaders exhibited must unavoid- 
ably have ruined even the best cause. They were in one cease- 
less internal feud and dissension ; and " the horrid cruelties, 
which they committed, must have inspired the Turks with the 
most invincible hatred," and rendered their resistance furiously 
obstinate. When Jerusalem w^as captured, all the inhabitants of 
both sexes and every age, were massacred without mercy and 
without distinction. Barbarians alone inflamed wdth religious 
enthusiasm could have acted like them. After the most terrible 
slaughter, " they marched over heaps of dead bodies towards the 
fictitious sepulchre, and while their hands were polluted with in- 
nocent blood, sung anthems to the Prince of Peace ; and their 
infatuation overcame their fury, for those ferocious victors wept 
aloud before the supposititious tomb of the Redeemer of Man- 
kind. But in 1204, still greater absurdity and wickedness 
were displayed. The croisading frenzy infected the children. 



I 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 175 

thdtisands Sf whom were conducted from the houses of their 
parents, of whom a part perished in the utmost misery, and the 
rest were sold by their pretended guardians as slaves to the 
Mohammedans. 

At the iftiandate of the Pope, the national chiefs, from the 
princes thrtjiugh all the degrees of their aristocracies, with their 
vassals, mafrched away to perish in the east, without any pros- 
pect of advantage. Thus the secular power was weakened, and 
the ecclesiastical tyranny was strengthened and extended. En- 
thusiasm, penance, indulgences, and excommunication, all com- 
bined their influence to coerce men to take upon them the croi- 
sading badge. The daring princes who unwillingly submitted 
to the Papal exactions, thus were removed ; the sway of the 
nations was virtually confided to the Romish Priesthood ; and 
the treasures of the people were transferred to Rome as a faith- 
ful depositary. The Papal legates received all the offerings 
and bequests which were made for the expedition ; and by the 
same process, the civil power of the nations was enfeebled, while 
the Pontifical aggrandizements were equally incessant and un- 
restricted. Spondan. Epis. Moreri. Diet. Hist. Tom. 3. Innet's 
Origines Anglicanse, Vol. 2, Page 103. 

Notwithstanding all the augmentation of opulence and power 
that the Pontifical hierarchy received from the transfer of their 
wealth, which the deluded hosts confided either to the protection 
or the support of their spiritual despots ; and although in the 
plenitude of its dominion, nothing appeared capable of diminish- 
ing its boundless sway, yet the result of the croisades after the 
final expulsion of the Europeans and their descendants from 
Syria, by the capture of Acre, was in many respects favorable 
to the western nations. The Arabians of that period, were 
refined and polished in their manners and in their style of living, 
when contrasted with the degraded and impoverished mode of 
existence at that period general throughout Europe ; and from 
that era, may be dated a considerable improvement in the cha 
racter and condition of the inhabitants who resided in the ten 
kingdoms of the beast. 



176 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

IV. The Papal Interdicts. Of all the extraordinary and 
gratuitous injustice and cruelty with which the Papacy is 
chargeable, probably the interdict is the most atrocious. It 
equally involved the innocent and the guilty ; punished the ser- 
vile people for the fancied faults of their rulers : and without 
scriptural sanction, or any precedent in antiquity, included the 
infliction of misery which appears solely to belong to the deci- 
sions and government of Omnipotence. The interdict was the 
masterpiece of " the son of perdition," to render ecclesiastical 
anathemas inexpressibly formidable : to sustain the prelatical 
usurpations ; and to appal the temporal potentates. In periods 
of superstitious ignorance, it is evident that revolts and insurrec- 
tions would speedily attend the execution of an interdict. By 
its fearful operation, all ceremonies, masses, marriages, festivals, 
confession, and absolution, except to the dying, ceased. The 
temples of idolatry were closed. Every ornament from the 
altars was removed. The bells were silenced. The dead were 
not buried in the grave yards, but thrown out in fields or the 
highways. Universal terror and consternation ensued, which 
the Popish priests constantly aggravated. 

Those dreadful scourges of kings and people were often ap- 
plied by the Popes and prelates to districts and to whole nations ; 
and the Papal interdicts have been sanctioned as of divine right 
by every portion in the Roman community. The council of 
Lateran formally approved of them, and prescribed the manner 
in which an interdict was to be enforced and executed. Eng- 
land, during the time of king John, because he would not sub- 
mit to the Papal usurpations and plunders, was under the Papal 
interdict during six years, and suffered indescribable anguish. 
After he had reluctantly submitted to the Pope, he was poisoned 
by a monk who had been specially absolved by his abbot to per- 
petrate that regicide. Henry II., king of England^ in conse- 
quence of his dispute with that Traitor Sai7it Thomas Becket, 
to save his people from an interdict, was obliged to ratify the 
most degrading conditions imposed by the Pope's legate ; and 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 177 

afterwards to walk barefooted above three miles in penance ovei 
sharp stones. He also received eighty strokes for a scourging, 
from the hands of several priests and monks, before the tomb 
and image of the ecclesiastical rebel, as an expiation for his atro- 
cious sin in opposing the universal civil supremacy of the Ro- 
man pontiff and his hierarchy. Sleidan's Key to History, page 
289. Hist, of England. Henry 11. 

V. Haughtiness and cruelty of the Popes. Raymond 
of Toulouse, in France, was excommunicated by Pope Innocent 
ni., as a favorer of the Albigenses. His subjects were also dis- 
charged from their allegiance, and his lands given to the first 
person who could seize them. To obtain that prize, 500,000 
greedy Papists were speedily embodied. To rescue his people 
from massacre, he submitted to the Pope ; who ordered him to 
be dreadfully lacerated with rods at the door of a mass-house, 
and then to be dragged about with a rope around his neck. 
After which, the Pope made him join the plunderers who spread 
universal devastation through his dominions, and murdered 
60,000 persons in the city of Beziers. Horsden. Baronius. 

Dandalo the Venetian was appointed ambassador to Pope 
Clement V. That he more effectually might appease his wrath, 
he appeared before him carrying an iron chain. In that state, 
he was fastened to the table, and the Pope ordered him to lie 
down under it like a dog. Sabellicus. 

One of the British earls had imprisoned a prelate. He was 
eventually surprised and captured. Pope Silvester II. ordered 
the earl to be tied to two wild horses ; and his mangled corpse 
was afterwards exposed on the public road without sepulture. 
Iniiet's Origines Anglicanas, Vol. 2. 

These facts are fully confirmed by the declaration of a famous 
Popish author, Augustus Triumphus ; who in his Pref Sum. 
to John XXII. used these words : " The Pope's power is infinite ; 
for great is the Lord, and great is his power, and of his great- 
ness there is no end." The Romish parasite could not thus 
blasphemously have magnified the pontifical beneficence. 

VI. Investitures. The subject of investitures is of greai 



178 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY, 

importance in correctly understanding the usurpations of the 
papacy. The sole cause of the protracted and wrathful disputes 
which flowed from that source, was this ; — that the Romish ec- 
clesiastics might be freed from the temporal jurisdiction ; that 
they might acquire the uncontrolled disposal of the property ob- 
tained for their orders exempt from taxation by the civil authori- 
ties ; and that they might be enabled Avithout restriction to aug- 
ment their inordinate wealth, without any obstruction from the 
vigilance and opposition of the monarchs in whose dominions 
their ungodly system was executed. Through the deadly super- 
stition which the Roman priests taught and promoted, the pall, 
the staff^ and the ring, which were the heathenish badges of the 
prelacy, were adjudged too sacred for the interference of the 
civil power. It was therefore claimed by the Popes, as their 
inherent prerogative ; that no prelate or me4;ropolitan should re- 
ceive those symbols of office but from their hands, and by their 
mandamus. 

The pall is nothing but a small piece of white woollen rag 
worn upon the shoulders of the prelates with pendants ; and for 
which, sums of money to almost an incredible amount were de- 
manded and received by the Pontiffs ; and to acquire that plunder 
from the people through the instrumentality of the subordinate 
ecclesiastic, was one of the two grand designs in that crafty but 
childish and Pagan contrivance. 

Another chief object was this ; to transfer the homage and 
fealty of all the ecclesiastics of every name and rank from the 
civil potentates to the haughty hierarch at Rome. At the period 
of investiture with office by the monarchs and princes, the 
prelates, abbots, &c. had been accustomed to perform all the 
feudal customs of homage, and to take the oath of fidelity and 
allegiance to them as their rightful sovereigns. Through the 
grasp of that power of investiture by the court of Rome, the 
homage and oaths and obedience were transferred to the Italian 
Pontiffs ; and canons were enacted by which the ecclesiastics 
were prohibited from acknowledging the authority of the tem- 
poral governors. 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 179 

The fifteenth canon of the council of Clermont commands ec- 
clesiastics not to receive benefices from the laity. The sixteenth 
canon prohibits kings and princes to grant investiture to prelates. 
The seventeenth canon enjoined upon prelates and priests not 
to take the oath of fidelity to any temporal jurisdiction. Other 
canons were promulged of a similar character. In a council 
held at Rome, in the year 1098, all ecclesiastics were pro- 
nounced excommunicated, who infringed upon those ungodly 
inhibitions. 

When Anselm, the English Metropolitan, and a minion of 
the Pope, was summoned to perform the usual homage to king 
Henry I. after his coronation, he indignantly refused ; and de- 
clared with great contempt, that he neither could nor would do 
homage to the king'. " I am forbidden so to do," said that 
haughty prelate, *'by the council of Rome." To which he 
tauntingly added — " if the king will receive and observe the 
decrees of that council, we may live in friendship together, but 
if not, I cannot in honor stay in England : and I have no in- 
tention to stay, if the king will not yield obedience to the Pope. 
Therefore, I desire the king to declare his mind, that I may 
know what I have to do." Dupin. Bibliotheque, Tom. 8. page 
7.5. Eadmer's Hist. lib. 3. page 56. 

Vn. Priestly Celibacy. Puffendorf, in his Introduction 
to the History of Europe, Cap. 12, sect. 32, illustrates the pro- 
hibition of marriage to priests in this forcible language. " The 
Ecclesiastics being freed from the care of wives and children, 
are more devoted to the interest of the Papacy. By their celi- 
bacy, they are not tempted to attach themselves to the sovereigns 
in whose dominions they reside ; they have no excuse for appro- 
priating any part of the ecclesiastical spoils for the subsistence 
of their families ; and they are better qualified, and always 
ready to execute the orders of the Pope, particularly against their 
own sovereigns, whose displeasure they dread not, when they 
can so easily remove from their jurisdiction. Thus having no 
care but for themselves and their order, the Pope has taught 
them to abandon all the associations of life without feeling, and 



180 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

has released them from all secular power and jurisdiction, that 
he might more securely retain them as his own vassals." 

The law of priestly celibacy, we are assured by the Apostle 
Paul, 1 Timothy 4: 1-3, is "the doctrine of devils," which 
never was enforced, until the hierarchy became too powerful to 
be resisted. That unholy machination, which has always and 
universally been the source of the most scandalous disorders and 
turpitude, has ever been held as the most inviolable and essen- 
tial part of the Papal system. Any Divine precept may be vio- 
lated with impunity by the Popish ecclesiastics ; but to comply 
with the ordinance of matrimony is the unpardonable sin at 
Rome. No dispensation can be obtained for marriage. Open 
concubinage is allowed ; flagrant adultery tolerated ; and the 
forcible violation of females accounted as scarcely a venial fault. 
"^Magis peccare," says Panormitan, Comment., Lin. Amo., 
Pag. 71, "censetur laicus fornicans, quam clericus adulterans, 
hac ratione, quod laicus alio remedio uti possit, quo clerico in- 
terdictum est. An unchaste laic is adjudged to sin more than an 
adulterous priest, for this reason, because a laic may use that 
remedy which is prohibited to an ecclesiastic." Even the odious 
accursed sin, Leviticus 20: 13, is counted as a small and venial 
transgression ; for Cardinal Casa, a Papal favorite, published a 
book entitled, he capitolo del for no, filled with incredible 
\yickedness ; and Pope Sixtus V. granted to the cardinal of St. 
Lucia a dispensation, to live habitually in that aw^ul sin, during 
three months of the year. Jurieu, Apolog. pour la Reform. Tom. 
1, Page 148. 

John Pye Smith thus wnrites. The forced celibacy of the 
priesthood " grows immediately out of ecclesiastical usurpation. 
This, in combination with private confession, proves the occasion 
of criminalities which poison the very springs of domestic 
virtue, and which the degraded state of public morals in the 
countries where they prevail, scarcely urges to disguise. By 
the decrees of councils, by the dispensations of Popes, and by 
the general practice of Rome, the concubinage of priests is a 
l^S offence than marriage. At the close of the council of Trent, a 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 181 

remonstrance was presented to Pope Pius IV., by the Roman 
priests of Germany, which was supported by the Emperor and 
the Elector of Bavaria. Among many other reasons against the 
law of celibacy, it alleged, " che di 50 sacerdoti catolici, a pena sc 
ne trova uno che non sia notorio fornicario. Soave Polano, 
Cone. Trid. Pag. 840. Of fifty Popish priests, scarcely one 
can be found who is not a notorious fornicator." The Pope's 
advisers represented the danger of discussion ; and the subject 
was obliterated. " But why is this anti-scriptural and iniquitous 
law permitted to pollute the Papacy ?• Because it cuts off the 
priesthood from family attachments and patriotic connections ; it 
more closely intwines their personal feelings with the interest 
of their order ; it thus makes them an army of devoted janizaries 
of the Pope ; and powerfully attracts into the coffers of the 
Church, whatever property the individual priests may acquire. 
Can such a system fail to be the fruitful parent of all immora- 
lity V\ Reasons of the Prot. Rel. 

The corruptions which have flowed from the prohibition of 
marriage among the Papal ecclesiastics surpass all description, 
and even almost credibility. A few extracts from Papal authors 
will verify, that it ever has been the overflowing stream of all 
abominations. 

Claude d'Espence de continentia, Lib. 2, Cap. 7, thus writes; 
*' Pro puro mundoque celibatu, &c. Instead of the pure and 
clean celibate, there hath succeeded an impure and unclean con- 
cubinate." Bernard de Persecut. Cap. 29 : "which neither can 
be concealed, it is so frequent ; nor does it seek to be concealed, 
it is s6 impudent." "That toleration or indulgence prevails among 
the priests, who have permission given unto them to cohabit 
with their concubines upon the payment of a yearly sum of 
money. In Germany, those who are continent are forced to pay 
the annual rent ; which being paid, they may choose whether 
they will keep a concubine or not." Upon the Epistle to Titus, 
he thus comments. " Prelates, archdeacons, and oflicials, ride 
about, not to deter the wicked from their vices ; but to defraud the 
priests and people of their money ; whom upon the payment of 



182 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

a yearly revenue they permit to cohabit with concubines. This 
revenue they receive also from the chaste, for they say, he may 
keep a concubine if he please. Are priests punished for un- 
cleanness ? Not at all." 

Nicholas Clemangis, a Popish archdeacon, who lived in the 
fifteenth century, wrote a volume, " De corrupto statu ecclesisB ;" 
in which he delineates the extremely inordinate sensuality of all 
orders of the Popedom. 

1. Cardinals. "Nee enumerare volo, &c. I will not enu- 
merate their adulteries, rapes, and fornications, by which the 
Cardinals pollute the Court of Rome, nor describe the most 
obscene lives of their families, exactly conformed to the manners 
of their masters." Chap. 12. 

2. Prelates. " Glui totos in aucupio, &c. They spend their 
days in fowling and hunting ; and being effeminate, pass their 
nights in dancing and lasciviousness with girls ; and by their 
filthy example, lead the people by a devious course to the preci- 
pice." Chap. 19. 

3. Regular Priests. " Ebrios, incontinentessimos, &c. They 
are drunkards, most lecherous, who every where and shame- 
lessly keep concubines in their houses. Who will call them 
regulars ?" Chap. 20. 

4. Monks. " Pro labore, &c. Sloth, and pride, and lust, govern 
them; instead of labor, rectitude, and chastity." Chap. 21. 

5. Mendicant Friars. " At non hi lupi rapaces, &c. Are not 
these men ravening wolves in sheep's clothing ; who, like the 
priests of Baal, in concealment devour what is offered, with the 
wives of other men and their own offspring ; greedily feasting 
themselves with wine and costly luxuries, and defiling all 
places with their voluptuousness, and filthy, burning lusts !" 
Chap. 22. 

6. Nuns. " De his plura dicere verecundia prohibet, &c. 
Modesty forbids to speak more concerning them. Instead of 
describing societies of virgins devoted unto God ; we should 
delineate brothels, with all the deceptions and wantonness of 
harlots, rapes, and incests. For what other are nunneries at 



THE PONTIFICAL taxbSCARCHY. 183 

this period, but execrable abodes of licentiousness devoted to 
Venus ; and receptacles in which lascivious youth fulfil their 
impetuous libidinousness ? So that it is the same thing to place 
a girl in a convent, and publicly to doom her to the vilest pros- 
titution." Chap. 23. 

A few additional testimonies will verify that the corruption 
which flowed from the celibacy of the Popish priesthood was 
not less complete than universal. That the system is unchange- 
able is demonstrated in " Secrets of Nunneries Disclosed." " Re- 
licto usu matrimonii, &c. Having relinquished matrimony, the 
ecclesiastics gratify every unlawful lust ; and transform law^ful 
marriage into adultery." Belga Schism, et Concil. Schism. 14. 
*' Flagitiose stupri, sodomitsB, bestialitatis plures rei sunt. Et 
omnes in supradictis sasvient sceleribus. All are guilty of those 
flagitious crimes." Hilderic Epist. advers. constit. Cleric. Celib. 

According to the order of Saint Bridget, monks and nuns 
resided in the same house. A prelate, who was confessor, per- 
suaded the nuns that they were innocent before God, notwith- 
standing the frequency of their sins, if they immediately confessed 
and received his absolution. Fuller's Church Hist, book 6. 

'* Vix centesimum invenias, fee, scarcely one priest out of a 
hundred is chaste." Cassander Consult. Artie. 23. 

Cardinal Campeggius decided, " Sacerdotes fiant mariti, &c. 
A priest becoming married commits a much more heinous sin, 
than if he associates with many harlots." Sleidan, Com. 1524. 

Cardinal Hosius Avrote — " Pighius non vere magis, quam 
pie, &c, Pighius aflirmed not less truly than piously, that a 
priest sins less who is habitually imclean, than if he contracted 
marriage." 

" Archiepiscopus Beneventanus, &c. The archbishop of Be- 
neventum wrote a book, than which nothing can be conceived 
more filthy ; and he was not ashamed to eulogize the most basely 
atrocious crime." Sleidan Comment. Lib. 2. page 652. 

During the thirteenth century a Papal council was held at 
Lyons. At the dissolution of that wicked assembly, cardinal 
Hugo, the Pope's legate, and president of that body of ecclesias^ 



184 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

tics, characterized the Roman cardinals, prelates, priests, monks, 
and nuns. In his farewell address to the magistrates and inha- 
bitants of that city, he thus displayed his own matchless audacity, 
and the unparalleled filthiness of the Papal hierarchy. " Amici, 
magnam fecimus, &c. Friends, since we arrived in this city 
we have performed for you a most useful service. At our first 
coming we found but three or four brothels ; and now at our de- 
parture we leave only one ; but that extends without interruption 
from the eastern to the western gate of the city." Mat. Paris, 
Hist. An. 1251. 

This was in exact conformity with the blasphemous canon of 
Thomas Aquinas. " Ex mandato Dei, &c. By the command 
of God, it is lawful to murder the innocent, to rob, and to commit 
all lewdness ; and thus to fulfil his commandment is our duty." 
Sum. Theolog. Compend. Quest. 34. 

Properly therefore might the poet describe Rome as one vast 
brothel to be execrated by all the world. After his visit, he thus 
wrote his farewell. 

; " Roma vale ! vidi, satis est vidisse, revertar 

Cum leno ; ant meretrix, scurra, cinaedus ero." 

VIII. Oaths of Romish Prelates. To establish and se- 
cure the ecclesiastical monarchy, Pope Gregory VII. changed 
the ancient profession of canonical obedience, into the form of 
an oath similar to that required by the emperor and other mon- 
archs of their feudal vassals. It was imposed with dreadful 
imprecations annexed to it. 

The two following oaths now comprise the permanent canoni- 
cal obligations of the Papal ecclesiastics. 

OATHS OF POPISH PRELATES AND PRIESTS. 

I, N. elect of the Church of N. from henceforward will be 
faithful and obedient to St. Peter the Apostle, and to the holy 
Roman Church, and to our lord, the lord N. Pope N. and to 
his successors, canonically coming in. I will neither advise, 
consent, or do any thing that they may lose life or member, or 
that their persons may be seized, or hands anywise laid upon 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 185 

them, or any injuries offered to them, under any pretence what- 
soever. The counsel which they shall intrust me withal, by 
themselves, their messengers, or letters, I will not knowingly 
reveal to any to their prejudice. I will help them to defend and 
keep the Roman papacy, and the royalties of St. Peter, saving 
my order, against all men. The legate of the apostolic see, 
going and coming, I will honorably treat and help in his neces- 
sities. The rights, honors, privileges, and authority of the holy 
Roman Church, of our lord the Pope, and his aforesaid success- 
ors, I will endeavor to preserve, defend, increase, and advance. 
I will not be in any counsel, action, or treaty, in which shall be 
plotted against our said lord, and the said Roman Church, any 
thing to the hurt or prejudice of their persons, right, honor, 
state, or power ; and if I shall know any such thing to be treated 
or agitated by any whatsoever, I will hinder it to my power ; 
and as soon as I can will signify it to our said lord, or to some 
other, by whom it may come to his knowledge. The rules of 
the holy Fathers, the apostolic decrees, ordinances, or disposals, 
reservations, provisions, and mandates, I will observe with all 
my might, and cause to be observed by others. Heretics, schis- 
matics, and rebels to our said lord, or his foresaid successors, I 
will to my power persecute and oppose. I will come to a council 
when I am called, unless I be hindered by a canonical impedi- 
ment. I will by myself in person visit the threshold of the 
Apostles every three years ; and give an account to our lord and 
his foresaid successors of all my pastoral office, and of all things 
anywise belonging to the state of my Church, to the discipline 
of my clergy and people, and lastly to the salvation of souls 
committed to my trust ; and will in like manner humbly receive 
and diligently execute the apostolic commands. And if I be 
detained by a lawful impediment, I will perform all the things 
aforesaid by a certain messenger hereto specially empowered, a 
member of my chapter, or some other in ecclesiastical dignity, 
or else having a parsonage ; or in default of those, by a priest 
of the diocess ; or in default of one of the clergy, of the diocess 
by some other secular or regular priest of approved integrity and 
16* 



186 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

religion, fully instructed in all things above-mentioned. And 
such impediment I will make out by lawful proofs to be trans- 
mitted by the foresaid messenger to the cardinal proponent of 
the holy Roman Church in the congregation of the sacred coun- 
cil. The possessions belonging to my table I will neither sell, 
nor give away, nor mortgage, nor grant anew in fee, nor any- 
wise alienate, not even with the consent of the chapter of my 
Church, without consulting the Roman Pontiff. And if I shall 
make any alienation, I will thereby incur the penalties contained 
in a certain constitution put forth about this matter. So help 
me God and these holy Gospels of God." — ^Barrow's Supremacy 
of the Pope, page 42-44. 

Jesuit's oath of secrecy 

" I, A. B., now in the presence of Almighty God, the blessed 
Virgin Mary, the blessed Michael the archangel, the blessed 
St. John Baptist, the Holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and 
the Saints and Sacred Host of heaven, and to you my ghostly 
father, do declare from my heart, without mental reservation, 
that his holiness Pope Urban is Christ's vicar-general, and is 
the true and only head of the Catholic or Universal Church 
throughout the earth ; and that by the virtue of the keys of bind- 
ing and loosing given to his holiness by my Savior Jesus 
Christ, he hath power to depose heretical kings, princes, states, 
commonwealths, and governments, all being illegal, without his 
sacred confirmation, and that they may safely be destroyed: 
therefore to the utmost of my power I shall and will defend this 
doctrine, and his Holiness' rights and customs against all usurp- 
ers of the heretical or Protestant authority Avhatsoever : espe* 
cially against the now pretended authority and Church of Eng- 
land, and all adherents, in regard that they and she be usurpal 
and heretical, opposing the sacred mother-church of Rome. I 
do renounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical 
king, prince, or state, named Protestants, or obedience to any of 
their inferior magistrates or officers. I do further declare, that 
the doctrine of the Church of England, of t^e C^alvinists, Hugo* 



( 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 187 

nots, and of others of the name of Protestants, to be damnable, and 
they themselves are damned, and to be damned, that will not for- 
sake the same. I do further declare, that I will help, assist, and 
advise all, or any of his Holiness' agents in any place, wherever 
I shall be, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, or in any other 
territory or kingdom, I shall come to ; and do my utmost to extir- 
pate the heretical Protestants' doctrine, and to destroy all their 
pretended powers, regal or otherwise. I do further promise and 
declare, that notwithstanding I am dispensed with to assume any 
religion heretical for the propagation of the mother-church's in- 
terest, to keep secret and private all her agent's counsels from 
time to time, as they intrust me, and not to divulge directly or in- 
directly, by word, writing, or circumstance, whatsoever ; but to 
execute all what shall be proposed, given in charge, or discovered 
unto me by you my ghostly father, or by any of this sacred con- 
vent. All Avhich I, A. B. do swear by the blessed Trinity, and 
blessed Sacrament, which I now am to receive, to perform, and 
on my part to keep inviolably. And do call all the heavenly and 
glorious host of heaven to witness these my real intentions, and to 
keep this my oath. In testimony hereof, I take this most holy 
and blessed sacrament of the Eucharist : and witness the same 
further with my hand and seal in the face of this holy convent." 
— Foxes and Firebrands. Usher. 

The antiquated form, which is of similar import, can be found 
in Baronius, who thus concludes his account of it. " Hactenus 
juramentum, &c. That is the oath w^hich to that period all the 
prelates used to take." An. 723, and 1079. Lab. Concil. Tom. 
10, Page 1504; and Tom. 11, Page 1565. 

IX. Exemption of Roman Priests. — 1. From the civil 
jurisdiction. Pope Lucius III. issued the following decree. 
" De omni crimine clericus debeat coram ecclesiastico judice 
conveniri. A priest, for any crime, must appear before the ec- 
clesiastical judge." The third Lateran council sternly forbad 
all laymen from coercing ecclesiastics to appear before a secular 
tribunal. A council was held in London, An. 1142, who con- 
firmed that canon, and the clergy were declared exempt from the 



188 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

secular power. Every violence or outrage to their persons, to 
the mass houses and grave yards, was declared an offence from 
which the Pope alone could absolve the guilty ; or the absolu- 
tion must be granted in the presence of the Pontiff From the 
primary declaration of that arrogance, until the consent of the 
European monarchs was fully obtained, there was a constant 
strife between the priests and their deluded votaries, and the 
reigning monarchs. King Henry II. of England, engaged to 
the Pope's legate ; " That no priests should be carried before any 
secular judge for any crime or transgression ; and persons who 
should confess, or be convicted of killing a priest, should be 
punished before the bishop." Innet's Origin. Anglican. Vol. 
II. Page 249, 319. But that proceeding finally injured the 
priesthood ; for as they had withdrawn from all obedience to the 
civil laws, so they derived little protection from the civil govern- 
ment. 

The Metropolitan of Canterbury complained, that for the mur- 
der of a priest, there was no temporal punishment awarded. 
Concil. Brit. Vol. 2. " The stealing of a sheep or a goat," af- 
firmed that hierarch, " is punished in a heavier manner than the 
murder of a priest. We have deserved this evil by our ambi- 
tious usurpation of the authority w^hich does not belong to us ; 
for by that accursed jurisdiction, which we have so presumptu- 
ously assumed, we have provoked God and the king ; and have 
opened a safe way to the laity to wreak their vengeance upon 
the priests." Henry II. King of England, ascertained that Avithin 
a short period after his accession to the throne, more than a 
hundred persons had been murdered b}^ Roman priests, of whom 
not one had been censured according to the canons. That mon- 
arch's determination to reform that monstrous evil, produced the 
collision with Saint Thomas Becket. Decret. Greg. Extravag. 
Jud. Tit. 1, Chap. 8. 

2. For their mass-houses. Popish asylums are the offspring 
of Paganism. The ancient Heathens transformed the temples 
dedicated to their fantastic divinities into secure refuges for 
malefactors, and guaranteed to them safety at the altars, tombs, 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 189 

and statues of their idol demigods. Popery to assert its power 
over the civil jurisdiction, declared all the altars, crosses, and 
consecrated places of every kind, sacred ground, which should 
protect transgressors from the arm of justice. Thus daring ruf- 
fians mocked at the law^s, and defied the magistracy. The coun- 
cils of Clermont of 1095, the third of Lateran, and many others, 
formed canons for perpetuating the privilege, and pronounced 
their anathema against every violator of their enactments. Some 
extended the safeguard to thirty paces around the place. By the 
twenty-ninth and thirtieth canons of the Clermont Council, it was 
decreed, that they who sheltered themselves beside a cross, should 
be in equal safety as if they had taken sanctuary within the 
walls, and that they should not be delivered up unless by the 
guarantee that capital punishment should not be inflicted. 

Those peculiar immunities subsist, even in the nineteenth cen- 
tury, in many parts of the Beast's dominions, and especially in 
Italy. Secrets of Nunneries disclosed, hy Scipio de Ricci. The 
disorders which originated in them, and the wickedness which 
they so evidently authorized, have long demanded, that the ex- 
istence of asylums should for ever be abrogated. Cardinal Al- 
beroni proposed, that the cardinals should solicit the Pope for 
an entire overthrow of that nefarious immunity for crimes, but 
they rejected the proposition. In reply, he exclaimed — " I wish 
that some miscreant would kill one of you, and that he would 
take refuge in a church under my protection. Instead of deli- 
vering him up to justice, though the whole body of cardinals 
should demand him, I would do my utmost to facilitate his es- 
cape." Mem. du Bar. de Polu. Tom. 3, Page 25. 

Pope Clement XIL, was inclined to abolish the immunity, so 
far as it adverted to assassins ; but he did not dare to undertake 
it. The monks find, that it excessively promotes their interest 
to preserve those asylums. " Those privileges draw to them the 
people's respect, and the veneration of the rabble." Platina. 
Dupin. Hist, du Droit. Eccles. France, Tom. 1, Page 57. 

3. From Taxation. The third Council of Lateran, with the 
severest penalties, prohibited all civil officers from coUectingf 



190 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

any taxes from the ecclesiastics or their possessions, unless in 
great emergency they granted a voluntary subsidy to supply the 
necessities of the government. The fourth Lateran Council 
confirmed the decree, with the additional proviso, that the grant 
shpuld not be made by the prelates, priests, abbots, and monks, 
without the Pope's consent first obtained. Pope Boniface VIII. 
ratified the act of the councils by his bull, in which he declared— 
" The laity have no power over the persons or goods of eccle- 
siastics. We ordain that all prelates and other ecclesiastics, 
who shall pay to laymen any part of their revenues, without our 
authority ; and all kings, princes, and magistrates, who shall 
impose taxes upon ecclesiastics, or who shall give aid or counsel 
for that purpose, shall forthwith incur excommunication ; the 
absolution from which shall be reserved to the Pope alone." 
The Council of Trent most amply corroborated all that which 
the prior Popes and councils had decreed concerning the eccle- 
siastical immunities. Consequently, the full exemption of the 
Roman priesthood from the civil jurisdiction, in their persons, 
residences, and taxation, is still as much a part of the doctrine* 
and practice of the Papal court, wherever the claim can be as- 
serted and enforced, as it was prior to the Reformation of the 
sixteenth century. Dupin's Hist. Vol. 9. Polanus, Hist, du Cone, 
de Trente ; Book 8. 

X. Monastic Possessions. From a comparison of various 
statistical accounts, where they were preserved most accurately ; 
it is evident, that the ecclesiastics at the commencement of the 
sixteenth century, must have been possessed of at least one half 
of all the ten kingdoms of the Beast. 

The Intendant of Lisle reported, that within the extent of fifty 
miles around that city, the income of the priests and monks 
amounted to ten millions, seven hundred thousand livres. In 
the province of Cambresis, the ecclesiastics had grasped four- 
teen parts out of seventeen of the whole. Hist, du Droit., Toiih 
1. Page 207. About the year 1700, there was in France, 18 
archbishops, 109 prelates, 16 generals of religious orders, 257 
commanderies of Malta, 556 abbey nunneries, 1356 abbey mo- 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 191 

nasteries, 700 convents of cordeliers, 1240 ptiories, 14,077 con- 
vents of all orders. There were 122,600 monks, and 82,000 
nuns. Their whole revenue was calculated at 26 millions ster- 
ling, or nearly 125 millions of dollars. Half the kingdom was 
in the hands of the priests and monks. Bleau. Atlas. Historiq. 

In Sweden, the hierarchy possessed more of the landed pro- 
perty, than the monarch and all his lay subjects. Vertot Re- 
vol. de Suede, Tom. 1, Page 6. 

In England, notwithstanding the act of mortmain, which 
hindered the transfer of estates to the priesthood or friars, 
during the reign of Henry VIIL, the law suppressed 645 mo- 
nasteries, the yearly income of which amounted to about twelve 
millions of dollars, besides immense quantities of gold, silver, 
and jewels. The scandalous iniquities of all orders of the 
monks and nuns, still remain on record in the preface to the 
British Act of Parliament, in justification of the proceedings 
by which those institutions were authoritatively suppressed. 
Echard's Hist^ Burnet's Hist, of the Reform. Warner's Eccles. 
Hist. Keith's Hist, of Religious Houses. 

In Scotland also, the costly abodes of superstition were erect- 
ed, as a sacrifice to prelatical and monastic folly : and the pro- 
portion of ecclesiastical wealth was greater even than in Eng- 
land. But as one of the Scotch writers povv^ erfully remarks — 
- ' Those defiled abodes of midnight riot, superstition, and de- 
bauchery, by the righteous judgment of heaven, are become 
ruinous heaps, and the haunts of owls and "venomous creatures; 
which are a striking comment upon the prophecy-'iespecting the 
^1 of Babylon, and portending the final desolation of the Papal 
systeis^(^/or * the wild beasts of the desert are there, and tbv>iiouses 
aretf ^il of doleful creatures, £tii|^^b\vls d\^-ell theg^-ahd satjnf^j 
dance there. Her time is near corner and her (^ j^^s shall not be, 
prolonged.'" Isaiah 13 : 21,22. ReveL^ipn^lbV' 2. ^ 

XL Papal Traditions. Romanists maintain, that the 
Bible has no authority except that which it derives from the 
Church, nor any sense but that which the Church appoints : 
hence it is a common declaration that *' the Ho.y Scriptures, in 



192 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

themselves, are nothing but a dead letter and a dumb rule." 
Pope Clement VI. thus decreed — " It belongs to the Pope alone 
to make general canons. The Pontifical authority is not sub- 
ject to the imperial, regal, or any power upon earth. The 
Pope's determinations are authentic concerning faith ; so that is 
true which he determines to be so, and that is false and heretical 
which he judges to be erroneous." Decret, Par. 1, Dist. 19, 
Cap. 1 ; and Caus. 2, Quest. 1. 

In conformity with that decretal, Tetzel, Cardinal Eckius, 
and Sylvester Prierias, maintained, in opposition to Luther — 
*' The word of God derives all its authority from the Churgh 
and the Pope, and to deny that proposition is heresy. Indul- 
gences were established by an authority greater than that of the 
Scripture, because the Church and the Pope appointed them." 
Basnage Hist, de la Relig., Tom. 2, Lib. 4, Cap. 1. Sylvester 
Prierias, Dial. Luth. Op., Tom. 1, Page 159, 166. 

The council of Rome, held by Gregory VII., in 1076, or- 
dained — " No chapter or book shall be held as canonical without 
the Pope's authority." Baronius, An. 1076. In the Glossa upon 
those decrees, it is contended, that " the^Pope can dispense with 
the Scripture by his interpretation." In his Epist. Lib. 7, Epist. 
7, Pope Gregory VII. thus wrote to the King of Bohemia, who 
wished that the ceremonies should be performed in the common 
tongue. " I will never consent that the service should be per- 
formed in the Sclavonian tongue, for God intended that his Scrip- 
ture should be concealed. I will oppose it by the authority of 
Peter, and you must resist them with all your might." 

In the Coimcil of Trent, Richard du Mans asserted — *' The 
Scriptr eis become useless since the schoolmen have estahiish^ 
Ine truth^'ox'' gJl doctrmes. Though it was formerly read rythe 
<^hurch for ptNalar instructioH', yet now it ought not to be made 
a study, becau^^tUhe JPtVfestants gain all those who read it." 
Fra Paolo, Hist. dfa'Conc. de Trente, Lib. 2, Page 178. 

Aniaud Defense de Ver. Page 63, demands the most abso- 
lute submission to the traditions of the Church, because other- 
wise, the Scripture, in whatever language i< is read, can only b« 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 193 

the occasion of making the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of 
the Devil. With which agrees Bailie, the Jesuit, who averred— 
" Without the authority of the Church, I would believe Matthew 
no more than Titus Livius, the historian." The comparison of 
Bellarmin is equally derogatory to Divine Revelation. He con- 
trasts the internal testimony of the Divinity of the Scriptures, 
w4th the interior evidence which the Koran of Mohammed pre- 
sents of its descent from heaven, and places both volumes on a 
level, in respect to the value of their claims to be a Divine Re- 
velation, except that the Papacy have confirmed the gospel. De 
Verb. Dei non Script., Lib. 1, Cap. 4. 

The Council of Trent, Session 4, Chap. 2, thus decreed — 
" The Holy Scripture shall not be expounded or interpreted 
contrary to the sense followed by the Holy Mother Church, nor 
contrary to the uniform consent of the Fathers, even though 
there should be an intention of keeping such expositions secret ; 
and the offenders against this canon shall be punished by the 
ordinaries." 

The following article is part of the creed of Pope Pius, which 
IS now the belief of every Papist. " I receive the Holy Scrip- 
ture according to that sense which Holy Mother Church, to 
whom it belongeth to judge of the true sense of the Holy Scrip- 
tures, hath held and doth hold ; nor will I ever receive and in- 
terpret it otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of 
the Fathers." Paolo Hist, du Cone, Lib. 2. 

The second Council of Nice pronounced those who despised 
traditions, excommamicated. Cone. Nice. 2. Tom. 7. Pope 
Nicholas I. decreed — " It would be an abomination to suffer the 
traditions received from the Fathers to be abolished ; and also, 
that the laws of the emperors can never be brought into com- 
parison with the canonical decrees of apostolical and evangelical 
traditions." Decret. Dist. 10, Cap. 1; and Dist. 12, Cap. 5. 

The Council of Trent, Session 4, enacted — " That all should 

receive, with equal reverence, the books of the Old and New 

Testament, and the traditions concerning faith and manners, as 

proceeding from the mouth of Christ, or inspired by the Holy 

17 



194 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

Ghost, and preserved in the Catholic Church ; and whosoever 
knowingly, and of deliberate purpose, shall despise traditions, 
shall be anathemaP The creed established by that Council, 
includes this article. " I do most firmly receive and embrace 
the ecclesiastical traditions, and other usages of the Roman 
Church." Fra Paolo, Hist, du ConciL, Vol. 2. 

Those traditions contain nothing in reference to Christianity; 
but they are all respecting the rights and power of the Popes 
and prelates ; and were only invented to promote superstition, 
heresies, and the Pontifical despotism. 

XIL Papal Infallibility. Ecclesiastical history attests, 
that during one thousand years after the closing of the Sacred 
Canon, or the Apostolic Age ; the infallibility of the Court of 
Rome v^' as neither mentioned nor invented. It was a Satanic 
device of the darkest period, to sanctify the Pontifical usurpa- 
tions, and to establish the universal supremacy of the great he- 
resiarch of Babylon. They continued however to claim it, until 
the Councils of Constance and Basle assumed their nominal supe- 
riority of control. The arrogated infallibility of Popes, had 
been fully announced nearly three hundred years before the ec- 
clesiastical councils impiously advanced their paramount title to 
that Divine attribute. 

The Decretals maintain — " The Pope can be judged of none. 
Their judgment, whether regarding faith, manners, or discipline, 
ought to be preferred to all things, and even to councils. There 
is nothing true, but what they approve ; and every thing con- 
demned by them, is false." Decret., Pars 1, Dist. 19, Cap. 1, 2. 
Lib. 3, Tit. 42, Cap. 3. 

Pope Leo IX. declared — " The councils and all the fathers re- 
garded the Church of Rome as the sovereign mistress, to whom 
the judgments of all the other churches belong. All difficult 
questions must be decided by the successors of Peter, because 
they have never lost the faith, and it v/ill remain with them to 
the end of the world." Leo Epist. 1, 4, 5. 

Pope Gregory VII. decided in council — " The Church of 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 195 

Rome never erred, and never shall err, according to the testi- 
mony of Scripture." Cochleus Cone. Vol. 8. 

Bernard expressly affirms — " The faith cannot possibly 
perish in the Court of Rome." Dupin Discour. Eccles., Diss. 
5. Cap. 2. 

Thomas Aquinas, in his Sum. Theolog., with all the school 
men, asserts the same " doctrine of devils." 

Lewis Capsensis de Fid. Disput. 2, Sect. 6, affirms — " We 
can believe nothing, if we do not believe with a Divine faith, 
that the Pope is the successor of Peter, and infallible." 

Rhodius de Fid., Quest. 3, Sect. 1, contends, that — " The in- 
fallibility of the Pope is an -essential article, and to deny it is 
heresy." 

Among the scandalous and heretical opinions which Pope 
Leo X., in his bull, alleged against Luther, is the following 
sentence. *' A man may maintain a doctrine opposite to the 
Pope, while he is waiting for the decision of a general council." 
That iniquitous position and practice of Leo is adopted among 
the Protestants, through the remains of Popery still infesting 
the Reformed Churches, who contend, that the sentence of the 
inferior body shall take effect, although an appeal has been taken 
to the higher assembly. That genuine Popish practice is equally 
contrary to reason, equity, and religion. 

Bellarmin avers — " The Pope when he instructs the whole 
Church in things concerning the faith, cannot possibly err ; and 
whether he be a heretic himself or not, he can, by no means, 
define any thing heretical to be believed by the whole Church. 
The Pope is absolutely above the whole Church, and above a 
general council, so that he has no judge above him on earth." 
De Rom. Pontif Lib. 3, Cap. 2 ; and Lib. 4, Cap. 6 ; and De 
Cone. 217. 

Jacob, de Concil., Lib. 10, declares — " The very doubt whe- 
ther a council be greater than the Pope is absurd, because it 
involves this contradiction, that the supreme Pontiff is not su- 
preme. He cannot err, he cannot be deceived. It must be 
conceived concerning him, that he knows all things." 



196 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

Mussus, a Prelate of Bitonto, Epist. ad Roman. Cap. 14, thus 
impiously exclaims — '* O Rome ! to whom shall we go for Di- 
vine counsels, unless to those persons to whose tru-st the dispen- 
sation of the Divine mysteries hath been committed ? We are 
therefore to hear him, who is to us instead of God, as God him- 
self In things that belong to the mysteries of faith, I would 
rather believe one Pope than a thousand Augustins, Jeroms, and 
Gregories ; for the Pope cannot err in matters of faith, because 
the authority and right of determining whatever relates to the 
faith, resides in the Pope." 

The cardmals, prelates, and ecclesiastical dignitaries of France, 
who assembled in 1625, declared — " The Pope is above the 
reach of calumny, and his faith out of the reach of error," 
Basnage Hist., Lib. 4, Cap. 4. Vol. 2. 

The Jesuits in the College of Clermont, maintained this 
thesis — " Christ hath so committed the government of his Church 
to the Popes, that he hath conferred on them the same infalli- 
bility which he had himself, when they speak ex cathedra, from 
their chair. Therefore, there is in the Church of Rome an 
infallible judge of controversies of faith, even without a general 
council, both in matters of right and of fact." Turret. Theolog., 
Vol. 3, Loc. 18, Quest. 11. 

The Councils of Florence and the Lateran ascribed infallibi- 
lity to the Pope. 

The Council of Trent, which is now the great Papal au- 
thority, also virtually enacted the same blasphemy. In that 
most unholy assembly, the Popes by their legates, declared that 
*' they would rather shed their blood than part with their rights, 
which had been established upon the doctrine of the Church, 
and the blood of martyrs." The cardinal legates were com- 
manded, not to permit the council to discuss and decide the 
question of infallibility ; and therefore they proclaimed, that 
*' they would rather lose their lives than permit so certain a truth 
to be disputed." The prelate of Granada openly maintained 
before that council, that *' the Pope is God upon earth, and 
therefore, he is not subject to a council." To verify which im- 



THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHT. 197 

pious dogma, the council at their concluding session, implored 
the Roman Pontiff to ratify their decrees. Paolo Hist, du Cone, 
de Trent, Palavicin 1st. del Cone, di Trent., Lib. 12, Cap. 15; 
Lib. 19, Cap. 14, 15; Lib, 21, Cap. 3. 

In the Examin. Princip. Fid. Page 110, many modern Ro- 
manist writers are quoted; all of whom contend, that the doc- 
trine of the personal infallibility of the Pope, is the common and 
true sentiment of the Papacy : and Bellarmin, the present oracle 
of the Roman court, categorically decides, that "although the 
contrary opinion, which is an error, is tolerated in the Church, 
it approaches very near to heresy," 

In reference to general councils, Gerson Exam. Doct. Con- 
sid. Yol. 1., Num. 18, endeavored to prove, that beings the last 
resort of the Church, they cannot err. The Council of Con- 
stance, Sess. 4, 5, thus decreed — " The general council, repre- 
senting the Catholic militant Church, hath power immediately 
from Christ, to which every one. Popes not excepted, are bound 
to submit in things pertaining to faith, manners, and reformation 
of the Church, in its head and members." All are subject to 
"punishment who refuse to obey it, of w^hatever rank or degree 
they may be, even though they are invested with the Papal 
dignity. 

The Council of Basle, Ep. Synod. Concil. Basle, also deter- 
mined — " A general council is above the Pope, and consequently 
he ought to be punished if he does not obey their decrees." To 
establish their own pre-eminence, they also declare themselves 
infallible, and thus announced — " It is blasphemy to doubt whe- 
ther the Holy Spirit dictated the resolutions, decrees, and canons 
of that council." 

The boasted unity of the Papal hierarchy may accurately be 
comprehended when we remember, that the Councils of Flor- 
ence, Lateran, and Trent, and the Jesuits, condemn the Council 
of Basle and Constance, and the Jansenists, upon that essential 
topic. 

But the university of Vienna seem to have surpassed the other 
objectors in their opposition to the official infallibility of the 
17* 



198 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

Roman Pontiff In their protestation, which was sent to the 
arch-prelate of Saltzburg, they profess — '* It is a manifest con- 
tempt of the Divine Majesty, and also idolatry, to appeal from a 
comicil to the Pope in matters of faith ; for that is to appeal 
from God, who is acknowledged to preside in a council, to a mere 
man." Basnage Hist, des dogm. de I'eglis. Romaine. Vol. 2. 

The Papal infallibility has been a prolific, continuous, and 
universal source of contention among the Romanists, who have 
not only quarrelled with each other in endeavoring to define and 
embody it, but also often contradict themselves. A few exam- 
ples of this versatility and oppugnation will amply demonstrate 
that Protestant arguments against the arrogated infallibility are 
altogether superfluous. 

Baronius, An. 373, asserts — *' It depends on the pleasure of 
the Pope to ratify decrees, and to alter them when ratified.' ' 

Bellarmin thus writes, De Concil, Lib. 2., Cap. 2, in direct 
opposition to himself — " The Avhole authority of the Church 
resides formally in the prelates alone ; as the sight of the whole 
body is formally in the head only. Therefore, to say that the 
Church cannot err in defining matters of faith, is the same as to 
say that the bishops cannot err." All Papists '* constantly teach, 
that general councils confirmed by the Pope cannot err ; and that 
the Pope, w4th a general council, cannot err in establishing arti- 
cles of faith, or general precepts of manners." In his w^ork, 
De Eccles. Lib. 3, Cap. 14, Bellarmin thus states the sentiments 
of Romanists upon the subject of infallibility. " The Church 
cannot absolutely err, either in things absolutely necessary, or 
in others which she proposes to be believed or performed by us. 
When w^e say that the Church cannot err, we understand it both 
of the universality of the faithful, and the unversality of bishops ; 
so that the sense of the proposition, ' the Church cannot err/ 
may be this ; that what all the faithful are bound to believe is 
true and faithful, and w^hat all the prelates teach as belonging to 
faith, is true, and according to the faith." 

In thus founding their boasted infallibility upon the successive 
unchangeableness and the universal identity of prelatical in- 






THE PONTIFIGAL HIERARCHY. 199 

structions and popular faith, Bellarmin has evidently obliterated 
every i^rticle of infallibility from among mankind, as com- 
pletely as Ziiing-le, Calvin or Knox wo aid have extirpated that 
blasphemous infatuation. To reconcile these last extracts with 
the prior quotations from his works is totally impossible. 

Tuber viile in his Catechism, affirms — " The holding of the 
infallibility of the Church and general councils, in delivering 
and defining points of faith, is the thing, in which the unity of 
the Church consists, for it is a high fundamental^ 

Bossuet Hist, des Variat. des Eglis. Prot. Liv. 15, Tom. 2, 
thus states the grand principles of modem Romanism. The 
doctrine concerning the Roman hierarchy "consists in four 
points, of which the connection is inviolable. 1. The Church 
is visible. 2. She always subsists. 8. The truth of the gospel 
is professed by the whole society. 4. There is no permission 
to depart from her doctrine, or in other words, she is infallible. 
From the three first articles, the fourth follows ; that it is not 
allowable to say that the Church may be in an error, nor to for- 
sake her doctrine." 

Chillingworth, in his Religion of Protestants, Chap. 1, Sect. 
9, 10 ; and Chap. 2, Sect. 2 ; and Chap. 3, Sect. 19 ; proves that 
the following principles combine modern Popery. " The denial 
of the Church's infallibility is the capital and mother heresy, 
from which all others of course must follow. There must be 
some external, visible, public, and living judge, to whom all 
persons, without danger of error, m.ay have recourse, and in 
whose judgment they may rest." This judge is called the 
Church, but it evidently means the Pope, as head and repre- 
sentative of the papacy. Hence it is clear, that all the dispu- 
tation respecting " the Infallible," is a mere fallacy ; for the Pope 
is that living Judge to whom all the controvertists appeal. 
" This declaration therefore comprises all points held to be ne- 
cessary to salvation. We are obliged, under pain of damnation, 
to believe whatsoever the Church proposeth, as revealed by Al- 
mighty God." 



200 THE PONTIFICAL HIERARCHY. 

In the glossa on the Canons, Cans. 24, Gluest. 1. Chap. 9, it 
is said — " What Church do you refer to, when you say it cannot 
err ? The Pope • is not infallible ; you must understand the as- 
sembly of the faithful." 

Pope Martin V., by a bull, approved the works of Thomas 
Waldensis ; who in his Doctrin. Fid. Tom. 1, Lib. 2. Cap. 19, 
remarks — " The Church which is infallible, is not that of Africa, 
nor that of Rome, nor that Church-representative a council, for 
councils often have erred; what then is that Church which 
ought to define matters of faith ? Is it the priests, or the prelates, 
or the Church assembled in a general council ? No ; for those 
have often fallen into erroic?" 

Cardinal Cusa, Concord. Cath. Lib. 2, Cap. 3, 4, affirms — 
'* It is confirmed by experience, that a general Council may err, 
and many councils have actually erred in their decisions." The 
infallibility of Popes, general councils, and the Roman hierarchy, 
is rejected by Cardinal Alliac, Author. Eccl. Par. 3, Cap. 3 ; 
by Clemangis, Panormitan, Jacobatius, and Occam ; Dialog. 
Par. 1, Lib. 6, Chap. 26 ; and Par. 2, Lib. 5, Cap. 1— by Car- 
dinal Turrecremata, Durand, Saint Anthony, and by Mirandola ; 
De Fid. et Ord. Theor. 4. 

The Avhole system of Romanism depends upon the Papal in- 
fallibility. If that lofty claim can be demonstrated, every article 
which the Papists teach must be received without scruple ; be- 
cause it is not less wicked than absurd to hesitate respecting that 
instruction which is perfectly devoid of error. But until the 
Popes, cardinals, councils, and hierarchy, have proved their title 
and possession of that godlike attribute ; and until they have dis- 
covered where and with whom that superhuman prerogative is 
vested ; Protestants may rationally and evangelically deny the 
impious pretensions of the Roman Pontiffs and their ecclesiasti- 
cal emissaries ; discard that " all deceivableness of unrighte- 
ousness;" compassionate their " lying wonders and strong delu- 
sion;" and "in the whole armor of God," defy and withstand 
that " working of Satan." 



NOTES 



I. PAPAL SUPREMACY AND INFALLIBILITY. 

The canons, decretals, bulls, and rescripts of every kind whicH are 
issued by the Popes and Councils, are always considered to be of the 
same authority and immutability, as '* the law o^f the Medes and Per« 
sians, which altereth not f so that it is a fundamental axiom of the 
Papacy — " No decree ar statute which" the Pope and General Councils 
" establish, may be changed." It is therefore of the highest importance^ 
accurately to comprehend the genuine attributes of those claims which 
the Popes so arrogantly usurp, and the abandonment of which would 
cause the immediate extinction of " Babylon the Great." 

There is a very ponderous volumte entitled " Corpus Juris Canonici, 
emendatum et notis illustratum, Gregorii XIII. Pont. Max. jussu edi- 
tum. Cum licentia." To that digest of the entire canons and pontifical 
laws, is prefixed the ratification of the Pope,. Gregorius Papa XIII. — 
" Ad futuram rei memoriam." Which volume, that Pope proclaimed, 
he commanded to be published for the convenience of all the Papists 
throughout the world, that all Roman Priests may know their duty to 
the Pontiff*; and urging all the secular authorities to enforce his assum- 
ed power and prerogatives. It should be remembered that not one jot 
or tittle of the whole farrago of impiety and despotism has ever been 
denied or rescinded ; and that the whole is uniformly taught by every 
Roman Priest to his votaries, and constantly exacted in all places and 
periods, when it can be done with the certainty of success. The follow- 
ing condensed catalogue of the Papal usurpations, depicts the very 
image of Antichrist, as " exalted in the Temple of God, above all that 
is called God, and that is worshipped." 

The references are minutely given, so that all persons can verify the 
truth of the quotations without difficulty. 

1. It standeth upon necessity of salvation, for every human creatura 
to be subject unto the Pope of Rome. — Boniface VIII. Extravag. de 
Majorit. et Obedient. Cap. TJnam. 

2. The institution of the Papacy began in the Old Testament, and 
was consummated and finished in the New ; for my Priesthood was 
prefigured by Aaron ; and other Prelates under me were prefigured by 
the Sons of Aaron under him. — Distinct. 12. Cap. Decretis. 

3. The primacy of Rome hath not been preserved by any general 
council, but was obtained by the voice of the Gospel and the mouth oi 
the Saviour.— PelagiuSy Distinct. 21. Cap. Qicamvis. 



202 NOTES. 

4. The Popedom hath neither spot nor wrinkle, nor any such thing. — 

Pelagius, Distinct. 21. 

5. All other seats are inferior to the Pope's ; and, as they cannot ab- 
solve him, so they have no power to bind or stand against him, no more 
than the ax hath power to stand or presume above him who heweth 
with it, or the saw to presume above him that ruleth it. — Nicholas, Dis- 
tinct. 21. Cap. Inferior. 

6. The Papacy is the holy and apostolic mother-church of all other 
churches of Christ ; from whose rules no persons should deviate ; but 
like as the Son of God came to do the will of his Father, so must you do 
the will of your mother the church, the head whereof is Rome : and if 
any persons shall err from the said church, let them be admonished, or 
else their names be taken, to be known that they swerve from the Ro- 
mish customs. — Lucius, Dist. 24. Ctuest. 1. Cap. Recta. — Calixtus, Dist, 
12. Cap. Non decet. — Innocent, Dist. 11. Cap. Quis. 

7. The Church of Rome, of which the Pope is Governor, is set up to the 
whole world for a glass and example ; therefore reason proclaims, that 
whatsoever that Church determineth and ordaineth, should be received 
of all men for a general and perpetual rule. Wherefore is verified that 
which was predicted by Jeremiah i. 10. '^ I have set thee over nations 
and kingdoms, to pnll down, to build," &c. — Stephen. Distinct. 19. Cap. 
Enim vero. — Boniface VIII. Extravag. Cap. Unam sanctam. — John 
XXII. Extravag. Cap. Super gentes. 

8. Whoso understandeth not the prerogatives of the Roman Priest- 
hood, let him look to the Firmament, where he may see the two great 
lights, the Sun ruling by day, and the Moon over the night. So in the 
firmament of the church, God hath set two great dignities — the authority 
of the Pope and of the Emperor. Of which the Pope's is the weightier, 
as they have to give account to God for kings of the earth and the laws 
of men; wherefore Emperors depend upon the Pope's judgment, and the 
Pope must not be reduced to the Emperor's wilL For what difference 
there is between the Sun and Moon, so great is the power of the Pope 
over Prelates and Priests, as that of Emperors and Kings who rule over 
the Laity. — Pope Innocent III. Artie. De Major, et Obed. Cap. Solitcs, 
— Gelasius, Dist. 96. Cap. Duo. 

9. The Earth is seven times higger than the Moon ; and the Sun is eight 
times greater than the Earth ; therefore the Pope^s dignity doth surmount 
that of the Emperor fifty-six times I Whence Constantine did wrong in 
setting the Patriarch of Constantinople on his left at his feet. — Innocent 
III. De Major, et Obed. Cap. Solitce ; and the Glossa. 

10. Emperors receive of the Pope their approbation, unction, conse- 
cration, and imperial crown, and therefore must submit their heads 



NOTES. 203 

under me, and swear their allegiance.— Clement V. De jurejurando. 
Cap. RoTnani. 

11. Princes should bow and submit their heads unto Prelates, and not 
proceed in judgment against Prelates. — Pope John, Dist. 96. Cap. Nun- 
quam. 

12. As reverence and submission w^ere usually given to prelates, how 
much more ought all persons to submit their heads to the Pope, who is 
superior not only to Kings but to Emperors 1 because, the Pope has the 
title of Succession to the Empire when the throne is vacant, and because 
Christ, the King of kings, and Lord of Lords, hath given it to the Pope 
through Peter. — Clement V. De Sententia et de rejud. pastoral. 

13. The Pope's power is not of man but from God, who hath appointed 
him Master and Governor over the universal church. It is his office, 
therefore, to look upon every mortal sin of all men ; whereby all crimi- 
nal offences of kings and others are subject to his censure ; so that all 
persons, at any time and in every case, either before or after trial and 
sentence, may appeal to the Pope. — Innocent IIL De judiciis. Cap. No- 
vit. — Marcellus, Cans. 2. Gtuest. 6. Cap. Ad Romanam. 

14. As Kings and Princes must submit themselves to the Pope's judg- 
ment, therefore all must be judged by the Pope, but he can be judged by 
no man. Though by his negligence or evil actions he should, draw with 
him innumerable souls to hell, yet no mortal may be so presumptuous as 
to reprove him, or to say — " Domine, cur ita facis ? — why do you thus 7" 
For although Balaam was rebuked by his Ass, and by the Ass the Papal 
subjects, and by Balaam the Roman Prelates and Priests are signified, 
yet the Laity must not rebuke their Priests. — Innocent III. De judiciis, 
Cap. Novit ille. — Boniface, Dist. 40. Cap. Si Papa. — Glossa Extrava. 
De Sed. Vacant. Cap. J.^ Apostolakis. — Leo, Caus. 2. Gtuest. 7. Cap. 
Nos. 

15. Who hath authority to accuse Peter's seat '? If it be said that Paul 
reprehended Peter, and therefore they were equal; it is answered, that 
Peter and Paul were not equal in office of dignity, but in pureness of 
conversation ; for Peter gave Paul his licence to preach by the authority 
of God. — Gregory 11. Gtuest. 7. Cap. Petrus. — Nicholas, Dist. 21. Cap. 
In cantum. — Jerom, Caus. 2. Q,uest. 7. Cap. Paulus; with the Glossa, 
Dist. 11. Cap. Quis. 

16. Be it known to all men, that Rome is the Prince and Head of all 
' nations ; tjie Mother of faith ; the cardinal foundation whereupon all 

churches do depend, as the door upon its hinges ; the first of all seats, 
without spot or blemish; the Lady, Mistress, and Instructer of all 
churches ; and a glass and spectacle to all men to be followed in every 
thing which the Roman Pontiff observes and ordains. — Caus, 2. Cluest. 7. 



204 NOTES. 

Cap. Beati.—'Nicholsis, Dist. 22. Cap. Omnes. — Anacletus, Dist. 22. Cap. 
Sacrosanda. — Pelagius, Dist21. Cap. Quamvis. — Nicholas, Dist. 21. Cap. 
Denique. — Stephen, Dist. 19. Cap. Enim vero. 

17. The Court of P,,om'e never was found to slide or decline from the 

faith of apostolical tradition, or to be entangled with any novel heresy. — 

Pope Lucius, Dist 24. Cluest. L Cap. Arect, 

■ 18. Whosoever speaketh against the papacy is a heretic, a Pagan, a 

7 witch, an Idolater, and an Infidel. — Nicholas, Dist. 22. Cap. Omnes. — 

Gregory, Dist. 81. Cap. Si qui. 

19. The Papacy possesses fulness of power to rule, decide, absolve, 
condemn, cast out, and receive. — Pope Leo, Caus. 3. Gtuest. 6. Cap. 
Multum. — Distinct. 20. Cap. Decretales. 

20. Appeals to the Pope should be made by all churches ; for it is by 
his authority alone that all decrees of councils and synods stand con- 
firmed. To him belongs full power to make new laws and decrees, to 
alter statutes, privileges, rights, or documents ; to separate things joined, 
and to join things separated, in whole or in part, personally or gen- 
erally. — Caus. 2. Q.uest. 6. Cap. Argtita. Cap. Ad Rommiam. Caus. 2. 
Cluest. 6. Cap. PlacuiL Giossa, Cap. Nisi. — Gelasius, Dist. 25. Cluest. 
1. Cdip. Conjidimus. — Urban, Dist. 25. Cluest. 1. Ca^.Sunt. — Pelagius, 
Dist. 25. Cluest. 2. Cap. Posteaquam. 

21. The Pope is Head of the church of Rome, as a king is over his 
judges ; for he is Peter's Vicar and Successor ; Vicar of Christ •, Rector 
and Director of the Universal church ; Chief Magistrate of the whole 
world; Head and chief of the Apostolic church ; Universal Pope and 
Diocesan ; Most mighty Priest ; living law on the earth, having all laws 
in his breast ; bearing not the place of man only ; neither God nor man, 
but between both, the admiration of the universe ; having both swords of 
temporal and spiritual jurisdiction ; and so far surmounting the authority 
of the Emperor, that of his own power alone, without a council, the Pope 
has authority to depose the Emperor, and transfer his dominions. — Bulla 
Donationis, Dist. 96. Cap. Corisfantin. — Paschalis, Dist. 63. Cap.^^^. — 
Clement V. Cap. Romani ; Giossa. — Boniface VIII. Sixt. Decret. Cap. 
Vbi. — Boniface, Prohem. Cap. Soxrosancta. — Anacletus, Dist. 22. Cap. 
Sacrosancta. — Boniface IV. Sixt. Decret. De Penit. et Remis. Cap. 5. 
Giossa. — Alexander IV. Sixt. Decret. Cap. 4. Giossa. — Hilarius, Dist. 
25. Cluest. 1. Niilli. — Sixt. Decret. Cap. Ad Arhitris. Giossa. — Boniface 
Sixt. Decret. De Const. Cap. Licet. — Innocent III. De Trans. Cap. " 
Quanto. — Prohem. Clement. Giossa. " Papa Stupor Mu7idi. Nee Deus, 
nee homo, quasi neuter es inter utrumque''"' — Boniface Extravag. De Ma- 
jorit. et Obed. Cap. Unam. Dist. 22. Cap. OmTies.— Sixt. Decret. De 
Senten. et Re. Cap. Ad Apostoli ; and the Giossa. 

2S. What power or potentate in all the world is comparable to me, 



NOTES. 205 

who have authority to bind and loose both in heaven and on earth ; who 
have power both of heavenly and temporal things ; to whom Emperors 
and Kings are inferior, as lead is inferior to gold 1 for the necks of 
kings and princes bend under his knees, and are happy to kiss his 
hands. — Nicholas, Dist. 22. Cap. Omnes. — Glossa, — Gelasius, Dist. 96. 
Cap. Duo. Cap. Illud. 

23. If the Pope has power to bind and loose in Heaven, how much 
more to loose Empires, Kingdoms, Dukedoms, and whatsoever else mor- 
tal man may have, and to give them where he will : and if he have au- 
thority over Angels, who be Governors of Princes, what then may he 
not do upon their inferiors and servants 1 — Gregory VII. — Platina. 

24. The power of the Pope is greater than Angels in jurisdiction ; in 
administration of Sacraments ; in knowledge ; and in reward. Does he 
not command the Angels to absolve the soul out of Purgatory, and carry 
it into the glory of Paradise 7 — Antoninus, Pars 3. Snmmse majoris. 
Bulla dementis, 

25. Who translated the empire from the Greeks to the Germans'? 
The Pope. Who, when the empire is vacant, is Emperor, and has the 
full right to dispose of all ecclesiastical benefices 7 The Pope. Who put 
down Childeric and set up Pepin ? Who appointed the king of Sicily *? 
Who stirred up Rudolph against Henry IV. 1 Who made Henry rebel 
against his Father the Emperor 7 Who forced Henry II. of England 
to go barefoot to the tomb of Becket 1 Who caused John to kneel and 
offer his crown to Pandulph the Legate 7 Who prostrated Hugo of 
Italy, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance '? Who excommu- 
nicated Henry V., and obtained all his rights 7 Who placed England 
under interdicts'? Who put his foot upon^the neck of the Emperor 
Frederick, and reproved him for holding the wrong stirrup of the horse 1 
Who excommunicated Emperors and Kings, and laid their dominions 
under interdicts 1 The Poyes. — Innocent, Elect. Cap. Venerahilem. Ex- 
travag. Execrahilis. — Zachary,CdiWs.lb. Cluest. 6. Cap. AZms. — Gregory 
VII. Clement. Cap. Pastoralis, — Platina. — Nauclerus. — Polydore Vir- 
gil. — Urban, Cdixxs. lb. Glues. 6. Ca'p.Juratos. — Alexander III. Spons. et 
Mat. Cap. Non est. — Adrian, Vit. RoiH. Pont. Bulla Adriani. Fox, Acts 
<tnd Monuments, 

26. Who is able to comprehend the greatness of the Pope's power and 
seaf? By him only, councils have their confirmation and their interpre- 
tation. By him, the works of all writers are reproved or allowed. All 
the letters and decretals of the Pope are equivalent with those of general 
councils. — Marcellus, Dist. 17. Cap. Synodum. Dist. 20. Dercetals. Nich- 
olas, Dist. 19. Cap. Si Romanoi'wn. 

27. God hath reserved the Pope from the judgment of man to his own 
judgment. — Symmachus, Cans. 9. Q^uest. 3. Cap. Aliomm. 

18 



g06 NOTES. 

28. The Pope, who is Judge of all, can be judged of tuone ; neither 

Emperor nor Priests, nor Kings, nor People. Who hath power to judge 
his judge 1 The Pope has power over councils ; but councils have no 
l^ower over the Pope, on account of his pre-eminence. — Innocent^ Cans. 6. 
€tuest. 3. Cap. Nemo. — Gelasius, Caus. 9. Glues. 3. Cap. Cuncta. 

29. All sentences and judgments of councils, and persons, ought to be 
examined, because they may be corrupted by fear, gifts, hatred, favor. 
Only the Pope's sentence must stand as given from Heaven, which no 
man may break, retract, dispute, or doubt. — Anastasius, dues. 3. Cap. 
Antiquis. — Gregory, Cluest. 3. Cap. Quot.—Agatho, Dist. 19. Cap. Sic 
omnes. — Nicholas ^ Gluest. 3. Cap. Patet, — Innocent II., Art. 17. Clues. 4. 
Cap. Siquis. 

30. If the Pope's judgment, statute, or yoke, cannot be borne, yet for 
remembrance of Peter it must be obeyed ; for the Pope is not a mere 
man. — Dist.J9. Cap. In memoriam. — Glossa. Extravag. Verb. Signific, 

31. The dignity of the Pope is to be reverenced through the whale 
world. — Symmachus, Caus. 9. Glues. 3. Cap. Aliorum. 

32. If Prelates are neither to be judged, nor reprehended, nor exacted, 
how much less the Pope, who is head of Prelates ? — Urban, Caus. Cluest. 
23. Cap. Quamvis. — Benedict, Extravag. De Auct. et Usu Pallii, Cap. 
Sanct. 

33. There are three kinds of power on earth. Immediate; which is 
that of the Pope from God. Derived ; to other prelates from the Pope. 
Ministering ; belonging to Emperors and Princes to minister for the 
Pope. — Sum. Maj. Pars 3. Antonini. Pope Innocent III. Sac. Unct. 
Cap. Qui vcnisset. 

34. The orders of Priests, Prelates, Archbishops, Patriarchs, as most 
convenient, the church of Rome hath instituted, following therein the 
example of the Angelical army in heaven, and of the Apostles; among 
whom there was not a uniform equality, but a distinction of power: 
for it was granted to Peter, themselves agreeing to the same, that he 
should bear superiority and dominion over all the other Apostles ; and 
therefore he had his name Cephas, that is, head or beginning of th« 
Apostleship. — Nicholas, Dist. 22. Cap. Omnes. — Clement, Dist. 80. Cap. 
In illis. — Anacletus, Dist. 22. Cap. Sacrosancta. "Gluasi vero Petrus 
non a Petra sed Kt<pa^ a^ro rm K£(pa^rjs ducatur. Peter is not derived from 
petra a rock, but Cephas is derived from KecpaXrj?, the head." 

35. The order of the New Testament Priesthood first began in 
Peter ; and as the authority given to Peter belongs to his successor; who 
therefore, in all the world, ought not to be subject to the Pope's decrees, 
which have such power in heaven, in hell, and upon earth, with the 
^nick and also the dead "l—Dist, 21. Cap. In novo. — Dist, 21. Cap. Z>^ 



NOTES. 207 

crelis. — Leo, Dist. 19. Cap. Ita Dominus. — Nicholas^ Dist. 23, Cap. In 
tan turn. 

36. The Papal Bull granted to all who died on their pilgrimages to Rome, 
that the pains of hell should not touch them; and that all who took the 
holy cross should not only be delivered himself from Purgatory, but that 
he should also release any three or four souls whom he named.— Cle- 
ment's Bull, Serin. Privileg. 

37. Having the assurance that the Pope's faith shall not fail, who will 
not believe his doctrine 7 for all persons who will not obey the decrees, 
or believe the doctrines, or who withstand the privileges of the church of 
Rome, are condemned as heretics ; because he goeth against the Mother 
of Faith. — Dist, 21. Cap. Decretis. — Anacletus, Dist. 22. Cap. Sacrosanc- 
ta. — Damasus, Gluest. 25. Qo,^. Omnia,— Gregory, 'Dist. \^. Cap. iV-wZ- 
lus. — Nicholas, Dist. 22. Cap. Ornnes. 

38. The power of the keys is given to the Pope immediately from 
Christ. By the jurisdiction of which keys of binding and loosing, and 
dominion, the fulness of Papal power is so great, that even Emperors 
and all others are subjects to the Pope, and ought to submit their acts to 
him. — Dist. 19. Cap. Si Romanorum. — Gab. Biel. Lib. 4. — Dist. 19. — 
Petrus de Palude. — Dist. 95. Cap. Imperator. 

39. The Pope is subject to no creature, not even to himself, except he 
submits himself to his confessor, as a sinner, but not as a Pope. So that 
the papal majesty ever remains unpunished; superior to all men; whom 
all persons must obey, and follow ; and whom no man must judge or 
accuse of any crime, or dethrone, or excommunicate, or deceive; for 
whoever falsifies to the Pope, is a church robber; and whoever obeyeth 
not him is a heretic, and excommunicated. — Dist. 95. Cap, Imperator. — 
Gab. Biel. Lib. 4. — Dist. 19. — Nicholas, Dist. Cap. Si Romanorum ; 
Qlosssi.— Quest. 24:. Cap. 1. Hcec est. — Dist. 4:0. Coup. Si Papa. — Quest. 
2. Cap. 7. Nos si; Glossa. — Extravag. De Unct. Csi^. Innotuit. — Ex- 
travag. Dist. 1. De penitentia. Cap. Serpens ; Glossa. — Dist. 19. Cap. 
Nulli. 

40. All persons are bound to obey Christ's Lieutenant on earth. Au- 
gust, de Ancho. — Deuteronomy 17. He who denies to the High Priest 
obedience, is under the sentence of condemnation, as much as he who 
denies to God his omnipotence. — Glossa. Ordinar. 

41. The greatness of the Pope's priesthood began in Melchisedec, 
was solemnized in Aaron, was continued in Aaron's sons, was made 
perfect in Christ, was represented in Peter, was exalted in the pontifical 
universal jurisdiction, and was manifested in Silvester and his succes- 
sors. — Antonin. 

42. That pre-eminence of priesthood by which all things are subject to 



208 NOTES. 

the Pope, verifies in. him what was spoken of Christ, Psalm 8 : OS. 
In which psalm, " Oxen" mean Jews and Heretics; and " Cattle of the 
fields" signify Pagans : for although they are without the use of the keys 
of binding and loosing, yet they are not out of the pontifical jurisdiction. 
By " sheep and all cattle" are meant all christians, Emperors, Princes, 
Prelates, and others. By " Birds of the air" may be understood the An- 
gels and Potentates of heaven, all of whom are subject to the Pope, for 
he is greater than Angels ; because he has power to bind and loose in 
heaven, and to give heaven to them that fight in the Pope's wars. By 
" Fishes in the sea" are signified the souls departed, who are in hell or 
in purgatory. For Pope Gregory delivered the soul of Trajan out of 
hell, and every Pope has the same power. The souls in purgatory 
stand in need of other men's help, and as they are yet '' Viatores et de 
foro Papse, Passengers and belonging to the Pope's court," therefore 
they can be relieved out of the storehouse of the church, by the partici- 
pation of the papal indulgences. — Antoninus. Summa Majoris. Pars 3. 
Dist. 22. — Cluest. 23. Cap. Omnium. — August, de Ancho. Them. Pars 
4. Cluest. '' An Papapossit totum purgatorium expoliare 7 Can the Pops 
empty purgatory ?" 

43. The Pope is the Vicar of Jesus Christ throughout the whole world, 
in the stead of the living God. He hath that dominion and lordship 
which Christ, when he was upon earth, would not assume ; that is, the 
universal jurisdiction of all things, both spiritual and temporal ; which 
double jurisdiction was signified by the two swords in the gospel, and by 
the offering of the wise men, who ofiered not only incense, to signify 
the spiritual dominion, but also gold, to point out the temporal dominion 
as belonging to Christ and his Vicar the Pope. We read that " the 
earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof;" and Christ said, " All 
power is given to me in heaven and earth" — so it may be affirmed, that 
the Vicar of Christ hath power over all things Celestial, Terrestial, and 
Infernal. That power he received immediately from Christ ; but all 
others take power directly from Peter and the Pope. Those who say 
that the Pope hath dominion only over spiritual things in the world, are 
like the Councillors of the kings of Syria, 1 Kings 20 : 23 ; " Their 
gods are gods of the hills, therefore they were stronger than we ; but let 
us fight against them in the plain, and we shall be stronger than they." 
Thus evil counsellors now, through their pestiferous flattery, deceive 
Kings and Princes ; maintaining that Popes and Prelates are gods of 
mountains, that is, of spiritual things, but they are not gods of valleys, 
that is, they have no dominion over temporal things, and therefore let us 
fight with them in the valleys for the power of the temporal possessions, 
and so we shall prevail over them. But what saith the sentence of God 
to theml 1 Kings 20 ; 28; '' Because the Syrians have said, the Lord is 



NOTES. 209 

God of the hills, but he is not God of the Valleys, therefore will I de- 
liver all this great multitude into your hands, and you shall know that I 
am the Lord." What can be more effectually spoken to set forth the 
Majesty of the papal jurisdiction which was received immediately from 
the Lord? — Dreido, de eccles. Scriptur. et dogmat. — Pevel. cont. Lu- 
ther. — Eckius in Enchir. — Gratianus Decret.— Gerson de Eccles. Potes- 
tate. — Hugo Cardinal, in Postilla. — Johan. Cremata de Ecclesia sum- 
ma. — Lanfranc cont. Wicliff. — Ockam, Dialog. Pars 1. Lib. 5. 

44. Emperors owe obedience to the Pope as their Superior. In their 
consecration they are anointed on the arm, the Pope receives the unc- 
tion on his head. As the Pope is superior to them, so he is superior to 
all laws, and free from all constitutions. Equity, according to the Pope's 
interpretation, is preferable to the written law; and whatsoever the 
Pope enacts, approves, or disapproves, all men ought to allow or reject, 
without judging, disputing, doubting, or retracting. — Scotus. — Thorn. 
Aquinas. — Walden, Confessio, et de Sacramentis. 

45. Such privileges were granted by Christ to the Court of Rome, that 
unless Prelates and Ministers of every country take their origin and or- 
dination from the Pope, they are not counted of the true church. —Dreido 
de Dogmat. Var. Lib. 4. 

46. The Pope is to be presumed to be always good and holy ; and 
though he be not holy, and be destitute of merit, yet the merits of Peter, 
his predecessor, are sufficient for him, who hath bequeathed a perpetual 
inheritance of merits and dov/ry of innocence to his posterity ; so that 
although the Pope should be guilty of Homicide, Adultery, and all other 
sins, he may be excused, by the murders of Samson, the thefts of the 
Hebrews, and the adultery of Jacob. — Hugo, Dist. 40. Cap. Nomios; 
Glossa. — Caus. 12. Gluest. 3. Cap. Absis. And if any Priest shall be 
found embracing a woman, it must be expounded that he doth it to bless her ! 

47. The Pope hath all dignities and all power of all patriarchs. In 
his primacy, he is Abel. In. government, the ark of Noah. In Patri- 
archdom, Abraham. In order, Melchisedec. In dignity, Aaron. In 
authority, Moses. In seat judicio.l, Sdncnuel. In .s^mZ, Elijah. In meek- 
ness, David. In poioer, Peter. In unction, Christ ! The power of the 
Pope is greater than all the saints : what he confirms none should alter ; 
he favors whom he pleases ; he can take from one and give to another : 
and all persons ought to eschew his enemies. — Caus. 11. Gluest. 3. Cap. 
Si inhnicus ; Glossa. 

48. All the Earth is the Pope's diocess ; and he has the authority of 
the King of all kings over their subjects. — Caus. 11. Q,uest. 3. Cap^ Si 
inimicus ; Glossa. 

49. The Pope is all in all, and above all; so that God himself and the 
Pope, the Vicar of God, are but one consistory ; for he is able to do al- 

18* 



210 NOTES. 

most that God can do, Clave non errante, without error. — Hostiensis, 
Cap. Ctuanto de translat. preb. — Baptist. Summa Casuum. 

50. The Pope has a heavenly arbitrament, and therefore he is able to 
change the nature of things, substantialia unius applicando alteri ; and 
of nothing, to make things to be ; and of a sentence that is nothing, to 
make it stand in effect. The Pope's will stands for reason. He can 
dispense above the law ; and of wrong make right, by correcting and 
changing laws. — Pope Nicholas, Dist. 96. Cap. Satis.— Bist. 12. Caus. 
11. Gtuest. 1. Cap. Sacerdotibus. — Caus. 12. Cluest. 1. Cap. Futuram, 

51. God, not Man, separateth that which the Pope dissolves; there- 
fore what can you make of the Pope but that he is God 1 The Emperor 
Constantine, at the council of Nice, called all Prelates gods ; therefore 
the Pope, being above all prelates, is above all gods. Wherefore, the 
Pope has power to change times, to abrogate laws, and to dispense with 
all things, even the precepts of Christ. — Decretal. De Translat. Episcop. 
Cap. Quanto. 

52. The Pope has authority, and has often exercised it, to dispense 
with the commands of Christ respecting War, Marriage, Divorce, 
Revenge, Swearing, Usury, Homicide, ferjury, and Uncleanness. — 
Pope Nicholas, Caus. 15. Cluest. 6. Cap. Auctoritatem. — Martin, Dist. 
14. Cap. Lector. — Gregory, Dist. 32. Gluest. 7. Cap. Quod proposuisii. — 
Innocent IV. Sixt. Decret. De Sentent. Excommun. Cap. Diledo. — 
Alexander III. De decimis. Cap. Exparte. — De Elect, et Elect. Po- 
testate. Cap. Significasti ; Glossa. — Baptista de Sum. Cas. — Innocent 
IV. De Elect. Cap. Venerabilem. — Extravag. de Jurejurando, Cap. Ve- 
nientes. — Martin V. Extravag. Cap. Begimi7ii Universal. Eccles. — Ur- 
ban II. Caus. 23. Cluest. 3. Cap. Excommunicatorum. 

53. The Pope can dispense against the law of nature, against the 
Apostles, and against the universal state of the church. — Pope Nicholas, 
Caus. 15. Cluest. 6. Cap. Auctoritatem. — Dist. 82. Cluest. 1. Cap. Pres- 
byter. — Pelagius, Dist. 34. Cap. Fraternitatis. — Baptista in Sum. Cas. 

54. Fifty-one cases are reserved to the Pope for his own dispensation, 
and none can dispense for them except by special license from the Ro- 
man Pontiff. Among those cases the following are enumerated: — 

Doubts and questions belonging to.faith.— Caus. 26. Cluest. 1. Cap. 
Quoties. 

Dispensation for vowing to go to the Holy Land. — Extravag. De vota. 

Dispensation for the vow of Chastity or Orders. — Extravag. De Statu 
Menachi. 

Dispensation against a lawful oath or vow. — Extravag. De juramento. 
Cap. Venientes. 

Dispensation for crimes greater than adultery. — Extravag. De judicio. 
Cap. Ac si ckrici. 



NOTES. 211 

Dispensation for murder, and maiming the human body.— Dist. 50. 
Miror, 

Dispensation in degrees of consanguinity and affinity. — Extravag. De 
prescript. Cap. XJltim. — De judicio. Cap. Novit. 

Dispensation to abolish laws, both civil and canonical. 

Dispensation for general Indulgences.— Thomas. 

Dispensation for new religion, and new rules, new ordinances, and 
new ceremonies. — Extravag. Gtui si sint legit. Cap. Per venerabilem,— 
Petrus de Palud. Lib. 4. 

Dispensation for disobeying all precepts and statutes. — Thomas, Dist. 
4. Cans. 7. Cluest. 3. Cap. Per pri7icipaiem. — Dist. 40. Cap. Si Papa, 

Dispensation for discharging persons from their oaths of allegiance, 
or any other obligation, to any person. 

Dispensation for a common Priest to confirm infants, give the lower 
ecclesiastical orders, hallow churches, and consecrate Virgins. — Dist. 
32. Cap. Verum. 

55. The Pope is free from all laws, so that he cannot incur any sen- 
tence of Irregularity, Suspension, or Excommunication, or penalty, for 
any crime. — Dist. 40. Cap. Si Papa. — Thomas, Cluest. 3. Cap. Perprin- 
cipalem. 

56. Thus the Pope hath all power in Earth, Purgatory, Hell, and 
Heaven, to bind, loose, command, permit, elect, confirm, depose, dis- 
pense, do, and undo — therefore, it is concluded, commanded, declared, 
and pronounced, to stand upon necessity of salvation, for every human 
creature to be subject lo the Pontiff of Rome. — Sixt. Decret. Cap. Feli- 
cis; Glossa. — Boniface VIII. Extravag. De Majorit. et Obed. Cap. 
Unam Sanctam. 

The above summary exhibits a mere outline of the impiety and des- 
potism which are embodied in all the authorized Papal documents 
and writers. All the modern rescripts which have been promulged by 
ihe Roman court, inculcate the same unholy assumptions ; although the 
language is more equivocal, and the poison is concealed by the very per- 
fection of Jesuitical artifice. 

" All those decretals," says Barkovich, " were compiled to invest 
the spiritual power with absolute and arbitrary authority ; a despotism 
more horrible than was ever witnessed in any eastern monarchy. 

" Daring the eleventh century, those false decretals were published. 
Besides the independence of the Priesthood of the temporal government, 
it was distinctly inculcated, that the orders of the Roman court should 
be every where obeyed, and by all classes of persons, without delay or 
contradiction ; that no civil law had any force or authority against the 
Papal canons and decrees ; that the tribunal of the church is superior to 
that of the sovereign ; and that the laws of the state ought only to be 



212 . NOTES. 

obeyed when they are not contrary to those of the church." — Secrets of 

Nunneries Disclosed, Page 166. 

The above dogmas destroy every natural and social right, and over- 
turn the foundations of human society, by the power which they give to 
the Roman Priest to excite sedition, rebellion, and wars; and the en- 
couragement which it aiFords to fanaticism and every species of crime. 
By the practical application of those doctrines, monarchs have violated 
the most solemn treaties which had been ratified even with oaths. In 
truth, the Roman Priests are nothing else than ''a bold and enterprising 
military force, animated by a voluptuous fanaticism, cupidity, ferocious 
ambition, and self-aggrandizement. They are bound by vows and sol- 
emn contracts to excite rebellion and insurrection, and therefore ought 
to be v.^atched with alarm, dread, mistrust, and jealousy, as the most 
dangerous enemies to every civil government. For the oath taken by 
the Popish prelates and Priests to the court of Rome, is an express and 
solemn promise to betray their respective governments and countries where 
they reside ; o.nd each clause of their canonical oath imposes an obligation 
upon every Papist^ if he can execute it^ to commit high treason /" 



11. — PAPAL Ferocity; or the bull "in ccena dominl" 

The ensuing papal bull is extracted from that famous book entitled 
" Bullarium Magnum Romanum." It embodies the substance of the 
papal doctrines, spirit, and acts ; which are always displayed when feasi- 
ble ; and which excommunication is regularly enforced in all parts of 
the world, by the priest in the confessional, as well as amid the more 
appalling ceremonies and intimidating superstitions which are used to 
excite the vengeance, and to terrify the minds of the enslaved devotees 
who witness the shocking rites attending its annunciation. To the last 
Papal authentic copy is prefixed the following notice; from which it 
appears that more than twenty Popes have ratified all its sanguinary 
principles and menaced damnation. 

" This is the excommunication and anathema of all heretics whatso- 
ever, and their favorers and schismatics ; and of those who violate eccle- 
siastical privileges, or in any mode infringe upon this bull, which is 
always published ' in cobtui Domini, at the supper of the Lord^ or on the 
Thursday before Easter. Almost all the chapters of this bull were or- 
dained before by Popes Urban Y., by Julius IT., by Paul III., and by 
Gregory XIII. The popes have made some variations in them, accord- 
ing to the exigencies of the times." 

Pope Nicliolas III. issued the first section by a particular edict, Piiis 



NOTES. 213 

II. adopted the second clause. The fourth was enacted by Pius V. The 
seventh was approved by Nicholas V. Calixtus furnished the tenth, in 
the form of a canon. Leo X. and Pius V. sustained the eleventh sec- 
tion. The twelfth was authorized by Alexander VI. To the fourteenth 
section is appended the sanction of Martin V., and Innocent VIII., and 
Leo X., and Clement VII., and Gregory XIIL The canon law and 
Martin V. ratify the fifteenth clause. Urban VI. authorized the nine- 
teenth. John XXIL, and Clement VI.,, and Leo X., and Paul IV., all 
confirm the twentieth section. To which must be subjoined, in the blas- 
phemous words of the Popish editor of the Bullarium Magnum Roma- 
nurrij in the sixty-second papal constitution, " Sancti Domini Nostril of 
our Holy Lord," Pope Urban VIII., almost the same excommunication 
was annually published on that appointed day. 

Bulla in Ccena Dominl This Bull against heretics , and against all 
other infringers of Roman ecclesiastical privileges^ is always pronounced at 
Rome^ and by all Roman priests, in every place , on the Thursday before 
Easter, 

" PAULj bishop, servant OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD, IN PERPETUAL MEMORY 
OF THE THING NOW DECREED. 

1. " The pastoral vigilance and care of the Roman pontiff, by the duty 
of his office, being continually employed in procuring, by all means, the 
peace and tranquillity of Christendom, is more especially eminent in re- 
taining and preserving the unity and integrity of the Catholic faith j so 
that the faithful of Christ may not be as children, wavering, nor be car- 
ried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning craft of men, 
whereby they lie in wait to deceive ; but that all may meet in the unity 
of the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man. 
For which causes the Roman Pontiffs, Peter's successors, upon this day, 
which is dedicated to the anniversary commemoration of our Lord's 
supper, have been used solemnly to exercise the spiritual sword of eccle- 
siastical discipline, and wholesome weapons of justice, by the ministry of 
the supreme apostolate to the glory of God, and the salvation of souls ! 
We, therefore, desiring to preserve inviolable the integrity of faith, pub- 
lic peace, and justice, follow that ancient and solemn custom. 

2. " In the name of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and 
by the authority of the blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, and by our own, 
we excommunicate and anathematize all Hussites, Wiclifites, Luthe- 
rans, Zuinglians, Calvinists, Huguenots, Anabaptists, Trinitarians, and 
other apostates, from the faith ; and all other heretics, by whatsoever 
name they are called, or of whatever sect they be. And also their adhe- 
rents, receivers, favorers, and generally, any defenders of them : with all 
who, without our authority, or that of the apostolic see, knowingly read 



214 NOTES. 

or retain, or in any way, or from any cause, publicly or privately, or 
from any pretext, defend their books containing heresy, or treating of 
religion ; as also schismatics, and those who withdraw themselves, or 
recede obstinately from their obedience to us, or the existing Roman 
Pontiff. 

3. " We excommunicate and anathematize all and singular, of what- 
ever station, degree, or condition they be ; and we interdict all univer- 
sities, colleges, and chapters, by whatsoever name they are called, who 
appeal from our orders or decrees, or of the Popes of Rome for the time 
being, to a future general council ; and also those by whose aid and fa- 
vor thai appeal shalL be made. 

4. " This clause excommunicates all pirates and corsairs. 

5. "This section anathematizes all those who plunder shipwrecked 
goods. 

6. " This paragraph utterly curses all the civil powers ' who impose 
new taxes without the consent of the Roman court,' 

7. " We excommunicate and anathematize all forgers of apostolic let- 
ters; and of supplications respecting indulgence or justice signed by the 
Roman Pontiff, or by the vice chancellors of the Roman see, or by their 
deputies, or by the command of the pope: and also all those who falsely 
publish apostolic letters ; and those who falsely sign such supplications in 
the name of the Roman Pontiff, or the vice chancellor, or their deputies. 

8. " This clause curses all those ' who supply materials of war to Sara- 
cens, or Turks, or to those who are expressly denounced as Heretics.' 

9. '' This section excommunicates all those ' who prohibit the trans- 
portation of things necessary for the use of the court of Rome.' 

10. 11. "These two paragraphs anathematize all those 'who inter- 
rupt, or injure, or rob, or kill pilgrims going to Rome, or returning 
from it.' 

12. " We excommunicate and anathematize all those who slay, wound, 
maim, strike, apprehend, imprison, detain, or in hostile manner pursue, 
the Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Legates, or Nuncios of Rome ; and 
those who drive them from their diocess, lands, and dominions; and 
£hose who command or allow those things to be done, or who aid, coun- 
sel, and favor them. 

13. " We excommunicate and anathematize all those who personally, 
or by others, slay, strike, or despoil any ecclesiastical or secular per- 
jBons who have recourse to the court of Rome for their causes and af- 
fairs ; or the auditors and judges deputed to hear those causes ; and this 
eurse extends to all who directly or indirectly act, procure, aid, counsel, 
and favor them. 

14. "The fourteenth section curses all persons, ecclesiastics and secu- 
lar, who appeal from the execution of the pontifical briefs, indulgences, 



NOTES. . 215 

and any of their othei: decrees ; and all those who have recourse for re- 
dress from the Roman jurisdiction to secular courts ; and all those who 
hinder or forbid the publication and execution of those letters and de- 
crees; and all those who molesi, imprison, terrify-j and threaten, those 
who execute the commands of the Roman court ; and all those who for- 
bid persons from having recourse to the Roman court for indulgences 
and letters, and aiFairs of any kind. 

15. '' The fifteenth clause anathematizes ' all persons, emperors 
kings, parliaments, dukes, and every other temporal ruler, with arch- 
bishops, and all ecclesiastics, down to vicars, who take away the juris- 
diction of any benefice, tithes, or other spiritual causes, from the cogni- 
zance of the- court of Rome.' 

16. *' The sixteenth paragraph curses all those who draw ecclesias- 
tical persons, colleges, convents, &c., before their tribunal, against the 
rules of the canon law; and also those 'who enact or publish any stat- 
utes, or orders, or decrees, by which the e<jclesiastical liberty is violated; 
or whereby our rights and those of our see, and of any other Roman 
churches, are in any way, directly or indirectly, prejudged.' j 

17. " The seventeenth section excommunicates all those who * hinder 
Roman prelates and other ecclesiastical judges, from exerting their ec- 
clesiastical jurisdiction against any persons according to the canons and 
decrees of general councils, and especially of the council of Trent; and 
all those who, after their sentence or decree, elude the judgment of the 
ecclesiastical court, by having recourse to secular courts to procure pro- 
hibitions and penal mandates against the said ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; 
and also all those who make and execute those decrees, and who aid, 
counsel, countenance, or favor them. 

18. '' We excommunicate and anathematize all those who usurp any 
jurisdictions, fruits, revenues, and emoluments, belonging to ns or the 
apostolic see, or any ecclesiastical persons, upon account of any churches, 
monasteries, or other ecclesiastical benefices ; or who, upon any occasion 
or cause, sequester the said revenues, without the express leave of the 
Bishop of Rome, or others having lawful power to grant such per- 
mission. 

19. " The nineteenth article curses all those who, * without special and 
express license from the Roman Pontiff, impose taxes or tributes upon 
Roman prelates, priests, and other ecclesiastics ; monasteries, churches, 
and other ecclesiastical benefices; and all who execute, procure, aid, 
counsel, or favor them — emperors, kings, &c.; and all other potentates 
whatsoever, presidents of kingdoms, &c., although invested even with 
pontifical dignity. Renewing decrees formerly set forth concerning those 
matters by the canons, as loell in the last council of Lateran, as in ether 
general councils^ with all the censures and jmnishmerUs contained in tkemj 



216 NOTES, 

20. " We excommunicate and anathematize all and every, the magis- 
trates, judges, notaries, &c., who intrude themselves in capital or crimi- 
nal causes, against ecclesiastical persons, by processing, apprehending, 
or banishing them, or pronouncing or executing any sentences against 
them, without the special, particular, and express license of this Roman 
see ; and also all those who extend such licenses to persons or cases not 
expressed ; or any other way abuse them, although the offenders should 
be counsellors, senators, chancellors, or entitled by any other name. 

21. *' The twenty-first clause curses"all those ' who invade, destroy, 
seize, and detain the city of Rome, and any territories, lands, places, or 
rights, belonging to the court of Rome.' It particularly enumerates 
* Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Peter^s patrimony in Tuscany, &c. j and also 
all those who adhere, favor, defend, counsel, or assist them.' 

22. " Our present process, and aU and every thing contain£d in these let" 
ters, shall continue in force, and he put in execution, till other processes of 
this kind be mude and published by lus, and the pope of Rome, for the time 
being. 

23. " None may be absolved from the aforesaid censures by any other 
than by the Roman Pontiff, unless he be at the point of death ; nor even 
then unless he gives caution to stand to the commands of the church, and 
give satisfaction. In all other cases, noTie shall be absolved, not even 
under any pretence of any faculties or indulgences granted and re- 
newed by us. 

24. ''If against these presents any persons shall presume to bestow 
absolution upon any of them who are involved in excommunication and 
anathema, we include them in the sentence of excommunication, and 
shall afterwards proceed more severely against them, both by spiritual 
and temporal punishments, as we shall deem most convenient. 

25. " We declare and protest, that no absolution, however solemnly made 
by us, ^Yi'diW in any way avail the aforesaid excommunicated persona, 
unless they desist from the premises with a firm purpose of never com- 
mitting the like action ; nor those who have made statutes against the 
ecclesiastical immunities, unless they shall first publicly revoke thosB 
statutes, orders, and decrees, and cause them to be blotted out and ex- 
punged from their archives and registers, and certify us of their revo- 
cation. 

26. '- Notwithstanding any privileges, indulgences, grants, and letters 
general or special, granted by the court of Rome to any of the aforesaid 
persons, or any others of whatsoever order, quality, condition, dignity, 
and pre-eminence they be ; although they should be bishops, kings, em- 
perors, or in any other ecclesiastical or sec;ular dignity, even Iry contract 
or for reward ; all which grants we utterly abolish and wholly revoke, 
Notwithstanding any pleas which may be alleged to the contrary. 



NOTES. 217 

-*fc'^. ** The twenty-seventh paragraph provides for the publication of 
the bull, so that no * persons concerned may pretend excuse, nor allege 
ignorance, as if it had not come to their knowledge.' 

28. " Moreover, that these processes and letters, and all and every 
thing contained in them, may become more manifest, by being published 
in all cities and places, in virtue of their obedience, we strictly charge 
and command all and singular patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bish- 
ops, ordinaries, and prelates, that by themselves or some others, they 
solemnly publish these present decrees in all their churches, every where, 
once per year, or oftener if they see convenient, when the greater part 
of the people shall be met for the celebration of mass ; and that they put 
the people in mind of them and declare them. 

29. " All patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, and prelates, as also all 
4^fetors, and others having cure of souls, and priests, secular and regular, 
r,t v'hd^ieveT orders, deputed by any authority to hear confession of sins, 
shall have a transcript of these present letters by them, and shall dili- 
gently study to read and understand them. 

30. " The thirtieth section provides that ' regularly attested copies of 
this bull shall possess equal authority with the original.' 

31. " Let no man infringe or boldly and rashly oppose this our excom- 
munication, anathematization, interdict, command, and pleasure. If 
any one shall presume to attempt it, let him know that he will incur the 
displeasure of Almighty God, and of his blessed apostles Peter and 
Paul. 

" Romee apud Petrum, Anno 1610. In the eighth year of the popedom 
of our 3Iosi Holy Father in Christ, and our Lord Paul V., Pope, the 
aforesaid letters were affixed and published at the doors of John Late- 
ran, and of Peter, and in the field of Flora. 

"Jac. Bambilla, Mag. Curs. 

" Balthasar VachAj and Brandimas Latini, Cursores." 

In the " Secrets of Nunneries Disclosed,*' Chapter III., is a memorial 
by Rucellai, who was Secretary to the government of Tuscany, con- 
cerning the bull " In Coena Domini." That antisocial bull is manifestly 
destructive of all civil governments. If it could be fully enforced, the 
Pope of Rome would be sole master of the actions, conscience, person, 
and property, of every human being. The court of Rome delegates 
authority for granting absolution in those cases which it has reserved 
in the bull '' In Coena Domini ;" and the Papal priests who reside under 
Protestant governments, are not only furnished with that authority, but 
also exercise it without hesitation. 

Rucellai, the Tuscan Secretary, thus illustrates the character and 
operation of the preceding bull. 
19 



218 NOTES. 

" Every government, for the sake of its own dignity and justice, 
should defend itself and ite rights against the invasions of the bull In 
Ccena, and their subjects against its menaced measures. That bull is a 
summary of all those ecclesiastical laws which tend to establish the 
despotism of Rome : a despofism wTiich is begrimed with the blood of 
many millions of human creatures, founded on the spoils of many de- 
based soi^ereigns, and raised on the ruins of many overturned thrones. 

" All Roman Priests ought to be punished as transgressors of national 
laws. Their obedience to the bull In Coena Domini, should not operate 
as an excuse for them. That bull is constantly published every where ; 
and its accursed principles are taught in all the schools, and are incul- 
cated on every penitent by their Confessors. It is not only most un- 
righteous in its claims and denunciations, but demonstrably subversive 
of all the rights of government, of law, of good order, of social decorum, 
and of public tranquillity. 

" The Papal Priests are the principal executive administrators of the 
bull In Ccdna Domini in the penitentiary chair ; where they always de- 
cide according to the orders of their bishop. But the prelate is only the 
instrument of the Roman court, and the wretched slave of their tyrannic 
caprice. Ever since, by forged and false decretals, they succeeded in 
changing into an oath of fidelity and feudal vassalage, that profession of 
faith which is made before being admitted a member of the church. 

*' That oath which the Roman Prelates and. Priests now taJce^ of unre- 
served allegiance to the Pope alone ^ is in fact a solemn promise, not only to 
be unfaithful to every lawful government, but also to betray it, as often as 
the interests of the Court of Pome may render it necessary. 

*' Governments, by allowing any persons who reside within their juris- 
diction to take such an oath, thereby recognise it as obligatory. All 
Roman priests who observe that oath, by putting in force the bull In Ces- 
tui, and by refusing absolution to those who violate it, or who do not re- 
pent of having violated it, are rebels to the government of their country 
which has proscribed it ; and those who do not observe it, are necessarily 
perjured. 

" Wherefore, the bull In Ca^na should be unequivocally denounced as 
an unjust civil law, which has been enacted by the Pope, and which he 
will always execute in all other dominions than his own, when it can be 
accomplished w^ith safety and success ; and consequently, the enforce- 
ment of the preceding bull, either directly or indirectly, in private or in 
public, should aathoritatively and universally be prohibited, and should 
also condignly he punished." 



CHAPTER III. 

THE "DAMNABLE HERESIEs" OF POPERY. 



Discipline— Canonical Satisfaction — Indulgences — Auricular Confession-^ 
Merits—Good Works— Supererogation— Purgatory — The Ransom of 
Christ — Necessity of Baptism — Baptismal Regeneration — Free will — 
Evangelical Perfection — ^^ Popish Errors and Heresies^^ — The Romish 
Doctrines contrary to " the Faith which was once delivered to the Saints^^ 
and derogatory to the glory of Christ^ 

The anti-christian errors that strictly belong to the faith, 
originated in the discipline of the churches in early ages, which 
was a subject then very inadequately understood. But now, 
such is their relation to the pontifical system, that they are per- 
ceived to be exactly adapted to establish their fundamental hy- 
pothesis — that grand delusion, the supreme dominion of the 
Pope in the Church of God. Many of the Romish prominent 
heresies existed long before they were embodied in a system ; 
but it is remarkable, that the primary design, and the natural 
tendency of all those aberrations from pure Christianity, con- 
stantly aided the superstructure of Babylon the Great. ; 

The extreme rigor of the discipline which was enforced in 
the primitive churches, arose from the fact, that the first believ- 
ers had no civil jurisdiction to which to appeal ; from the Pagan 
calumnies against the " Nazarenes ;" and also from the persecu- 
tions with which they were tortured. 

A» there were no Christian magistrates to whom delinquents 
could be referred for the judgment and punishment of crimes, 
the censure of the churches was more inflexibly severe towards 
offenders against the morality of the gospel. 

The calumnies and cavils which were promulged against the 
innocent disciples, concerning promiscuous sexual intercourse, 
incests, infanticides, nocturnal conspiracies, eating of human 
flesh, and numberless others, flowed from the misrepresentations 



220 DAMNABLE HERESIES 

of evangelical institutes, and from the nefarious turpitude of some 
of the heretics, which was falsely ascribed to the true disciples 
of Jesus. Whence, the believers, who were anxious that no 
just cause of offence and reproach should be given to their ene- 
mies, but rather that they might be convinced by holy actions, 
were induced to enforce a very exact discipline, and especially 
when the crimes imputed to avowed Christians in any measure 
adverted to the imperial authority. Justin Martyr Dialog, cum 
Tryphon — Tertullian Apolog. Cap. 39. — Cyprian cont. Demet- 
rium. — Epiphanius Heres. Lib. 1. Cap. 68. 

The terrific persecutions also with which the follow^ers of 
Jesus of Nazareth were afflicted, were another cause of that 
strict discipline : for it was deemed essential to provide against 
the backsliding of the weaker disciples, who from dread of tor- 
ture might be induced to deny their holy religion. 

The persons who were the subjects of that discipline were 
generally divided into two classes — of which the higher crimes 
were numbered, as adultery, homicide, idolatry, and apostacy. 

Apostacy, or the denial of Christ, was exemplified by three 
classes of offenders. 1. Sacrificati ; persons who sacrificed to 
idols, or who tasted of the things which were immolated. 
2. Thurificati ; those who burnt incense to the idols. 3. Libeller 
tici ; persons who either affirmed by a writing presented to the 
governor or judge, that they were not Christians ; or to whom 
a writing was falsely given by the magistrate for a sum of 
money, that they had sacrificed, that they might be exempt from 
persecution. 4. Traditores ; persons who delivered to their per- 
secutors the sacred oracles to be burnt. — Cyprian. Those who 
thus were among the lapsed, were either suspended or ejected. 
At first they w^ere prohibited from the eucharist ; but as the rigor 
of discipline increased, they were excluded even from the pub- 
lick prayers and the hearing of the word. 

The period for which the excommunication continued was 
gradually prolonged. In the commencement, it w^as appointed ' 
only until the time of manifest repentance, but afterwards it was 
protracted during the lives of the backsliders. 



OF POPERY. 221 

Sometimes reconciliation was given, when the excommunica- 
ted, by the help of Divine grace, exemplified th^r godly sor- 
row ; at which time they were admitted openly to declare their 
penitence in public ; the first step of which was confession ; not 
in private or secret, but public. Tertulliayi, Peniteyit. Cap. 9. 
*' The penitents were brought forward by the presbyters, kneel- 
ing around the beloved servants of God, and miited their .sup- 
plications with all the brethren." Cyprian, Epist. 10, vehe- 
mently censures those persons who oflTered peace and adminis- 
tered the communion to the backsliders ; before they had made 
a public confession of their most grievous fault, and had been 
restored to the fellowship of the Church. 

Canonical satisfaction followed confession. That satisfac- 
tion was imposed by the senior members of the church, that the 
restored brethren might testify their repentance and renova- 
tion, by certain works, and give external signs of their sincerity. 
They remained prostrate without the doors of the temple in 
mourning apparel, clothed in hair cloth, sprinkled with ashes, 
with tears and fasting, and implored peace with the believers. 
Those exactions, however, in the fourth century, and by the 
Nicene canons, gradually became less rigorous; although many 
public expressions of compunction were required, and much 
humiliation was experienced by the offender, before he was re- 
conciled to the Church, and re-admitted to the Lord's Sup-, 
per. 

Besides the above recited works of satisfaction ; during the 
times of persecution, it was required ; chiefly of the Thurificati^ 
those who burned incense to idols ; that they should effuse their 
. prayers in public around the tombs of the martyrs, by which they 
might recall their offering of incense, seek from God more con- 
stancy in braving persecutions, and give public evidence, after 
the example of the martyr interred in that place, that they were 
fully prepared to suffer martyrdom. After the excommunicated 
had proved their contrition by those external signs and evi- 
dences, the elders deliberated whether the penitential works 
were sufficient to satisfy the requisite discipline of the Church; 
19* 



222 DAMNABLE HERESIES { 

and if it was decided in the affirmative, absolution and imposi- ' 
tion of hands succeeded. 

Those requisitions and ceremonies referred not to the remis- 
sion of sin before the tribunal of God, but to the remission of 
ecclesiastical punishment, by which the penitent, having com- 
pleted the period of repentance, was reconciled to the Church. 
The declarations of two of the ancient casuists upon this topic 
are very important; because they show that the absolution 
which was pronounced by the primitive churches, however in- 
compatible many of its adjuncts were with the simplicity of the 
gospel, was totally different from the remission of sin wliich the 
Roman priests now blasphemously pretend to bestow. " We do 
not decide in anticipation of God, who will judge; much less 
that we have discovered the full and true penitence of the sin- 
ner, for then it might be supposed, that his pardon had been 
established by us." — Cyprian. " Not as if they had obtained 
forgiveness of sins from us, but that by us they may be turned 
to the understanding of their transgressions." — Firmilianus. 

That absolution was public ; for during the first three centu^ 
ries there is no mention of private absolution. C^-prian, who 
lived in the middle of the third century, says in his sixth Epis- 
tle, that he had resolved from the commencement of his ministry, 
to do nothing of his own private opinion, or *' sine consilio et 
consensu plebis, without the counsel and consent of the people." 
In his ninth Epistle he declares, that penitents shall come to 
confession at the proper time, according to the discipline of the 
Church, and shall receive the right of communion by imposition 
of the hands of the ministry. In Epistle the twenty-eighth, he- 
remarks — "The affairs of the Church must be discussed, and 
the reason for every thing more amply corrected, not only in the 
college, but Avith the whole multitude of the people, that the af- 
fairs may be determined and announced with all duly pondered 
moderation, so that it may serve for an example in future to the 
ministers of the Church." In other parts of his writings Cy- 
prian appeals to the same practice as the custom of the Church 
universal ; whence it appears, that every act was decided not by 



OF POPERY. 223 

the rulers of the Church exclusively, but by the whole society 
of Christians. » 

The period for the penitence was different. In the fourth cen- 
tury, the council of Ancyra decreed, that backsliders should be 
placed during one year among the auditors ; that they should 
kneel for three years ; that they might join in prayer after two 
years, and then they might be admitted to the grace of perfection. 
But the rigor of the discipline was diminished, and indulgence 
granted for several causes : disease, infirmity, or the approach of 
death, lest in despair they should fall into the great temptations 
of the devil. From martyrs and confessors also in prison, 
backsliders importunately craved the writing of reconciliation : 
through whose intercession, peace was granted to the penitent, 
the rigor of the canonical law was cancelled, and they were re- 
stored to the Church. Tertullian, in his work Ad Martyr., often 
adverts to that topic ; and Cyjprian, Epist. 29, 30, very lucidly 
depicts the great abuses which proceeded from those writings. 
Others, also, who had deserved well of the Church, were some- 
times admitted to obtain absolution for their friends, and to sub- 
mit to punishment for them by performing some work of repen- 
•tance. All which errors, in posterior ages, combined to sustain 
jhe grand working of Satan, in the unlimited despotic authority 
of the Beast and the False Prophet. 

The previous delineation adverts to the Church during the 
persecutions and the supremacy of the Heathen emperors. Very 
different was its aspect under the Christian rulers : for the minis- 
ters instantly began to advance themselves above their congre- 
gations. Hilary or Ambrose, commenting on 1 Timothy 5 : 14- 
17, thus complains — " The synagogue, and afterwards the 
Church, had their elders ; without whose counsel nothing was 
transacted ; which course has become obsolete, by whose negli- 
gence I know not ; unless by the sloth, or rather the pride of the 
teachers, who alone wish to be seen." Jerom also, expounding 
Matthew 18:17;" Tell it to the Church ;" remarks—" That the 
bishops and presbyters, interpreting that place, from the pride of 
the Pharisees assumed it to themselves; so they thought that 



J^24 DAMNABLE HERESIES 

they might condemn the innocent, and release themselves, bemg 
guilty. '* We read," said they, "in Leviticus, concerning the 
lepers, where they were commanded to show themselves to the 
priests, that the leper might be pronounced clean or unclean, so 
the bishops or presbyters bind and loose." 

Thus the public acknowledgment was changed into a private 
confession of sins. Whence, in the Church at Constantinople, a 
special officer was appointed, although his functions afterwards 
were abrogated. " It was the duty of the Penitentiarius to hear 
the confession of great crimes and sins, to which at that time con- 
fession was restricted." Socrates, Hist. Eccles, Lib. 4, Cap. 19. 
Sozomen, Lib. 7, Cap. 16. However, both that confession and 
the confessor soon became obsolete in the Eastern churches. 

But among the Latins that practice was introduced ; and con- 
fession extended so rapidly, that the power of hearing confessions 
was granted to all priests ;* whence arose auricula^' confession^ 
which the Romanists pronounce to be necessary to salvation. 
That ceremony was afterwards transformed into a sacrament ; 
and gradually became the grand instrument to promote the dom- 
ination of the Papal court, and the avarice, with the profligacy 
of the Roman priesthood. 

Not only was there a departure from the primitive custom in 
that stage of the penitence, but that discipline was applied to 
every species of backsliding and sin. Many were the fictitious 
works of repentance ; and in the subsequent ages of ignorance, 
that canonical satisfaction was considered not only as adverting 
to ecclesiastical discipline, for the scandal committed, but also as 
removing the sin itself; for those penitential acts, to the great 
detriment of Christianity, were held to be satisfactory even at 
*'the judgment seat of Christ," by which Divine justice was 
appeased, and remission of sin meritoriously acquired. 

From that dreadful delusion proceeded the corrupt opinions 
concerning the 7nerit of good loorks, and justification through in- 
herent righteousness. Thus the Synod of Trent decreed — *' Good 
works truly deserve everlasting life, and the attainment of that 
life eternal, with the increase of glory." Bellarmin also says— 



OF POPERY. 225 

"-Eternal life, in its first step, as well as in its progress, is granted 
to the meritorious works of the sons of God." But the Roman- 
ists at the same time assure us, that the acquisition depends upon 
the will and pleasure of the Roman Pontiff. 

From that ignorant confounding of works of penitential chas- 
tisement which , satisfied the Church, according to the ancient 
discipline, with the punishment of sin which is due to Divine jus- 
tice, another opinion arose. According to the economy of grace, 
the Papists said, the guilt of sin and the punishment of eternal de- 
struction can be forgiven to the justified only ; in that sense, that 
to them, for the temporal punishment of all sins committed after 
baptism. Divine justice must be satisfied in this life by the peni- 
tential works and mortifications which are prescribed by the 
" Sacrificulis,^'' Mass-priests. Which doctrine equally tended to 
aggrandize the Roman power, and to fill the ecclesiastical treasury 
with the spoils of deluded souls. 

But if any person neglected to excel in this life, the very 
benevolent priests were unwilling to adjudge him to eternal an- 
guish ; they therefore appointed a method by which he might 
repair his loss and obviate his neglect, by the invention of Pur- 
gatory, which fabulous world, Bellarmin thus describes : — " By 
common consent, the schoolmen agreed, that there is within the 
earth four gulfs, or one divided into four parts. The lowest for 
the damned, the next for purgatory, the third for infants who die 
without baptism, and the fourth for the righteous who died before 
the sufferings of Christ, which now remains vacant." De 
Purgat. Lib. 2, Cap. 6. 

The fathers of the primitive ages knew it not, nor did their 
immediate successors mention it. That error first arose in the 
Church about the time of Gregory I. It was propagated in 
the west by Bede, fostered and preserved in the times of igno- 
rance, and ratified as infallible by the Council of Florence, in 
the year 1439. The error concerning the remission of guilt 
became the foundation of Purgatory ; for, they said, all punish- 
ment is not cancelled for venial offences ; the satisfaction of 
Christ being restricted by them to mortal sins. Bellarmin, in 



226 DAMNABLE HERESIES 

his treatise upon Purgatory, adduces Plato's Phaedon ; Cicero's 
Somnium Scipionis; and the sixth book of Virgil's JEneii] 
and cites those three authors expressly to prove that Purgatory 
is a Christian doctrine. 

Thence flowed suffrages, orisons, oblations, penal works of the 
living, masses to help the dead, and Papal indulgences, by which 
pains and griefs are mitigated. Purgatory is the inexhaustible 
gold mine of Roman priests and monks, and a powerful buttress 
of the towers of Babylon. 

But since that dogma of human merit cannot be reconciled 
with the perfect satisfaction of Jesus, they have divided the work 
of salvation between man and Christ; and thence they have dis- 
tinguished the ransom of Christ by its sufficiency and efficacy. 
Sins also are subdivided into mortal and venial, and those before 
and after baptism. They likewise contend that Christ paid a 
sufficient price : but that God denies the application of it, except 
for mortal sins, and transgressions which were prior to baptism. 
For the rest, the man himself must satisfy. 

Another erroneous principle followed respecting the efficacy 
of baptism. They pretended that the merit of Christ was applied 
only for sins committed before baptism. Hence, they ascribed 
the application of it to baptism; when they affirmed, that under 
the Old Testament, " ex opere operantis, by the work of the 
agent," but under the New Testament, *' ex opere operate, by 
the work wrought," man is justified by baptism, which is the 
first justification; so that baptism is the physical, and not a 
moral conveyance of grace. 

To that fallacy succeeded the opinion, that baptism is abso- 
lutely essential. Wherefore, in case of extreme necessity, the 
Papists permit not only laymen, but also women to administer 
baptism. Some Romanists contend, that all who die without bap- 
tism, even infants, are absolutely damned, and are deprived both 
of natural and celestial blessedness ; because, without baptism, 
the grace, neither of remission of sins nor of true regeneration, 
can be conferred. 

But as human salvation was thus divided between Christ and 



OF POPERY. 227 

man ; the sound doctrine of faith and justification was changed 
and perverted ; because they pretended that by baptism the me- 
rits of Christ were applied to mankind. They had previously de- 
clared that the good works of righteous men truly and properly 
deserve eternal life ; but since a perfect keeping of the divine law 
is required to the attainment of everlasting happiness, they pro- 
mulged, that man in this life perfectly and absolutely could fulfil 
the law of God. Hence they deny, lest it might be considered 
impossible to keep the law, that concupiscence, or "the primary 
natural emotions which are found in baptized and justified per- 
sons, are properly sin. " That concupiscence which the Apostle 
calls sin, the Synod declares, the Catholic church never under- 
stood to be called sin truly and properly in the regenerate ; but 
•because it proceeds from sin and inclines to sin — if any person 
shall think otherwise, let him be anathema." Concil. Trident 
Sess. V. 5. 

Those are part of the errors which originated in the doctrine 
of the primitive discipline inaccurately understood. It already 
has been stated, that it was enjoined upon the excommunicated, 
and especially upon those who had burnt incense, that they should 
pray for greater constancy upon the tombs of the Martyrs, and 
there testify, that impelled by the remembrance of them, they 
also were prepared to suffer death for the name of Jesus. 

That apparently harmless custom produced the appointment 
of religious peregrinations to sacred places for the sake of wor- 
ship, which peculiarly contributed to augment the ecclesiastical 
opulence and the pontifical power. 

From which custom, with extravagant superstition, and the 
belief that the saints were present at their tombs, the Invocation 
of them flowed. That error, the oratorical apostrophes of 
Basil, Nyssen, Nazianzen, &c. favored. They were very elo- 
quent speakers, and used various rhetorical figures, and as they 
addressed the dead martyrs as if they were present, they grad- 
ually sought their suffrages and mediation. 

Bat as satisfaction for sin was referred to the divine tribunal, 
80 the notion of absolution was corrupted, by which the penitent 



228 DAMNABLE HERESIES 

sinner formerly was reconciled to the church ; for gradually it 
was perverted into the remission and absolution of sins -at the 
divine tribunal. 

That absolution had been effected from the beginning by the 
prayer of the priest in a certain form. Gregory I. Book 12, 
Epist. 32, says — " Sinners are reconciled to the church by the 
prayers of the Priests." He proves that absolution was pro- 
nounced by the prayer of the Priests during many ages, with 
imposition of hands. *'For what is imposition of hands but 
prayer over the man?" Augustin, Book 3. Cap. 30. In the 
age of Charlemagne and Lewis, the fbrin was by petition, and 
not judicial, because it was thus supplicatory — " May God put 
away all thy sins, and deliver thee from all evil !" Bibliothec. 
Patrum. 

In the Lateran council, held in the year 1215, the judicial 
power of the Ministers, notwithstanding much opposition, was 
obtruded upon the people, and was thus confirmed by the Coun- 
cil of Trent, Session 6, Canon 14. "Priestly absolution is not 
the mere ministry of announcing the gospel, or of declaring the 
remission of sins ; but it is a judicial act, by which, as by a 
judge, sentence is pronounced." The ninth canon also declares 
— " If any person shall say that priestly absolution is not a judi- 
cial act, but the mere ministerial declaration that sins are remit- 
ted to the confessing penitent, that he may believe that he is 
absolved, let him be anathema." That impious principle be- 
came the strong support of the pontifical domination, because 
the Roman Priests taught, that crimes are expiated by forms of 
prayer, pilgrimages, fastings, bodily lacerations, and if those 
punishments seem too grievous, that they might be commuted 
for money. 

It is also a wondrous anomaly, that Popish Priests should use 
the judicial form in the sacerdotal absolution, and nevertheless, 
at their Extreme Unction, where there is the greatest need of the 
definitive sentence, they retain the ancient form of invocation. 

The rigor of discipline in the ancient church had been relaxed 
through favor granted to the intercession of a Martyr or Con- 



OF POPERY. 229 

fessor, and by degrees, that kindness was imbodied in the Papal 
Indulgences. They had been admitted as Mediators in respect 
to ecclesiastical discipline ; and subsequently, not only Martyrs, 
but all who had peculiarly benefited the Church, both the living 
and the ^ead, were esteemed as Mediators with God. Hence 
arose the unholy distinction between the Mediator of Redemp- 
tion and Intercession; the first, second, and more excellent 
Mediator ; and the Mediator of participation. — Bellarmin, Lib. 
1. De Sanctor. Beatit. Cap. 20. To sustain that error, the 
Papists teach, that a mere man could be Mediator ; and that 
Christ was not a Mediator, unless according to human nature. 
*' Nullo pacto convenit Christo esse Mediatorem, in quantum 
Deus est, sed in quantum homo. Christ could not be a Media- 
tor as God, but as man." — Thomas, Pars III. Gluest. 26. Art. 2. 
Whence it follows, that as Christ did not visit, according to his 
human nature, during the dispensation of the Old Testament, 
and consequently, could not fulfil the duty of a Mediator, a Me- 
diator was wanting to the Patriarchs. Thus they say, that the 
Fathers who died before the advent of Messias, were not taken 
up to the celestial glory, but resided in the place which they call 
Limbiis Patrum. To which they subjoined another error, that 
the soul of Christ, when separated from the body, descended to 
hell, that he might liberate and bring away the souls of the 
Fathers of the ancient economy who were dwelling in the Lim 
bus adjoining the infernal region. 

Sometimes those who by the ancient discipline had been ex- 
communicated, were again restored to the communion through 
the intercession of Martyrs or othar benefactors of the church. 
Thus as one was admitted to obtain absolution for another, so 
one performed the works of penitence for another, to satisfy 
the ecclesiastical authority ; whence the meaning of the term 
satisfaction being perverted, the error of works of supererogation 
followed. Hence they decreed, that temporary punishments which 
sinners incurred after baptism could obtain remission, not only 
by their own satisfaction, but by that of others, as by meritorious 
penitential Works of piety undertaken for another's sake, as 
20 



2S0 DAMNABLE HERESIES 

alms, pilgrimages, masses, &c. For that purpose, they pro- 
mulged that there was a treasury m the church, which consisted 
not only of the merits of Christ, but also of the supererogatory 
works of holy men, from which indulgences and pardons can be 
dispensed by the Roman Pontiff, or by the Priests by the Pope's 
authority, which has peculiarly subserved the interests of the Pa- 
pal hierarchy. 

That men Aight perform that supererogatory work, it was 
also necessary, that they should be able to do something more than 
the law of God required, or which they were not bound to per- 
form. Hence they declared, that besides the common perfec- 
tion enjoined by Christ and his Apostles, to which all Christians 
are bound, there is a more glorious state, which they call evan- 
gelical perfection, in obedience to their " consilia evangelica.^'* 

That perfection, they assert, consists in twelve traditions, which 
they do not consider as mandates by which man is obligated, but 
only as counsels, that it is in the power of man to omit or fulfil. 
Those are self-denial ; chastity ; voluntary poverty ; intermission 
of the oath ; sacrifice of revenge ; patience under injury ; alms- 
giving ; intention to perform good works ; solicitude for worldly 
supplies ; avoiding occasions of evil ; fraternal correction ; and 
agreement of words with actions. All which the Papists reduce 
to three principal counsels — voluntary poverty ; perpetual celi- 
bacy ; and obedience to the ecclesiastical Superior either in the 
Convent, or to the priestly Confessor. Thus they proclaim, that 
they who live in those states are more holy than common Christ- 
ians ; and not only are thought to live more excellently than is 
sufficient to satisfy God; but that from their superabundance, 
they can also expiate the crimes of other miserable sinners, by 
their works of supererogation. 

Willet, in his survey of *' Popish Errors and Heresies," thus 
enumerates the principal *' strong delusions" of the mystical 
Babylon : 

I. Invocation and honors to angels and departed 
Saints. 

1, Angds, The Papists affirm, that there aie nine orders of 



OF POPERY. 231 

Angels. — Rhemish Test. Ephesians 1. That Angels offer up 
our prayers unto God. — Rhemish Test. Revelation 8. That 
Angels and other celestial spirits, the Saints, know our hearts 
and inward repentance. — Rhemish Test. -Luke 15. That reli- 
gious reverence, honor, and adoration are to be given to Angels 
and Saints. — Rhemish Test. Revelation 19. That Angels are 
our advocates and protectors, and therefore it is lawful to direct 
our prayers to them. — Rhemish Test. Colossians 2; and 1 
John 2. 

2. Purgatory. There are four infernal, or subterrestrial 
places — Hell ; Purgatory ; Limbus Infantum for children who 
die without Baptism ; and Limbus Patrum, where the Patriarchs 
were before Christ's incarnation. In Hell and Purgatory there 
are, psenam damni et pcenam sensus, punishments of loss and 
pain. The two Limbi are only dungeons of darkness, without 
torment, except absence from God. They also affirm, that Hell 
and the Limbus Infantum continue for ever ; but that Limbus 
Patrum was dissolved at the resurrection of Christ, and Purga- 
tory will cease at the day of judgment. — Bellarmin De Purgat. 
Book 2. Cap 6. 

Purgatory is an infernal prison in the earth, where the souls 
which were not fully cleansed in this life, are purified by fire, 
before they are admitted into heaven. — Bellarmin, De Purgat. 
Book 1. Cap. 1; and 2: 6.— Rhemish Test. Matthew 12. 

Upon that doctrine, Augustin affirms — " Non est ulli ullus 
medius locus, ut possit esse nisi cum diabolo, qui non est cum 
Christo. There is no middle place ; but he who is not with 
Christ is with the Devil." — " Tertium locum penitus ignoramus, 
imo nee esse in Scripturis Sanctis invenimus. We are utterly 
ignorant of any third place, for we find it not in Scripture." — 
De Peccator. Remiss. Book 1, Cap. 28. 

Espencaeus, a Papist, also declares — '* Animarum post disso- 
lution em carnis suum quasque statum immutabilem sortiuntur. 
Every soul, after the dissolution of the flesh, enters into its 
immutable state." — Comment. 2 Timothy, page 144. 

Papists say, that he who believeth not that there is a Purga- 



232 DAMNABLE HERESIES 

tory will surely go to hell. They only go to Purgatory who 
die in venial sin, or whose sins are remitted, but the punishment 
not satisfied. The souls in Purgatory neither sin nor merit any 
more; and are certain of their final salvation. — Bellarmiii Da 
Purgat. Book 1. Cap. 11 ; and Book 2. Cap. 1, 2, 4. 

Papists teach, that the praiyers of the living avail neither for 
the Saints in heaven nor for the damned in hell, but only for 
those who are in Purgatory, who find great ease from them, and 
therefore we ought to pray for them. — Bellarmin De Purgat. 
Book 2. Cap. 15, 18. — Rhemish Test. 2 Thessalonians 2. 

3. Canonization of Saints. Canonization is the sentence of 
the Church, that the men who are dead are Saints, and worthy 
of honor and worship. Prayer may be offered to them ; Tem- 
ples and Altars may be set up in their names ; Festivals may be 
appointed for their honor ; and their relics should be adored ; all 
which are lawful, profitable, and expedient. — It belongs to the 
Pope to canonize Saints, and in that act he cannot err. — Bellar 
min De Sanctis. Book 1. Cap. 7, 8, 9, 10. 

4. Adoration of Saints. Religious worship is due both to 
God and the Saints ; herein only is the difference ; the more 
religious worship belongeth only to God, and the less unto the 
Saints. — Bellarmin De Sanctor. Beatit. Book 1. Cap. 12. 

Vows may be made to Saints as well as prayers, and it is 
lawful to swear by the name of Saints. — Rhemish Test. Mat- 
thew 21. 

That w^orship which is proper to God is expressed by the 
Greek word ^arpeia. The other word SovXeia is used for all kinds 
of service, both of God and men ; so that the religious worship 
which is called ^arpzia is given to God only ; but ^ov\€ia may be 
attributed to Angels and Saints. — Bellarmin De Sanct. Book 1 
Cap. 12. 

Kissing of the feet of Popes is a sign of reverence done to 
Christ. — Rhemish Test. Acts 4. 

Papists declare, that it is lawful and godly to pray unto de- 
parted Saints. — Rhemish Test. 1 Timothy 2, — Bellarmin De 
Sanctor. Beat, Book 1. Cap. 19. 



OF POPERY. 235 

Saints in heaven pray particularly for us. — Rhemish Test. 2 
Peter 1: 15. For they know our hearts; — they have power 
to help us, and are such patrons of men, that they have the 
government of the world so committed unto them, that they may 
receive others into heaven ; and the Saints at their pleasure can 
be present with their bodies, and. be among us and hear our 
prayers. — Bellarmin De Sanctor. Beatit. Book 1, Chapters 18, 
and 20. 

5. Relics. The relics of Saints, their bodies, bones, and se- 
pulchres, are to be adored and reverenced. — Council of Trenf^ 
Session 25. — Bellarmin DeReliq. Sanctor. Book 2. Chapter 21. 
Peter's chair at Rome; the Prison where Paul was kept in 
Malta ; the chain with which Paul was bound at Rome ; and 
the stone which struck Stephen upon the elbow, preserved at 
Ancona. — Rhemish Test. Romans, chapter 16,6. Acts, chapters 
28 ; and 27 ; and 7. 

Relics, bones, &c. may endure for a long time. — Rhemish 
Test. Hebrews 9. Miracles are wrought by them. — Rhemish 
Test. John 14; and 2 Corinthians 12. They are seen in visions 
and apparitions. — Rhemish Test. Hebrews 13; and Acts 10. 
Papists trust in the miracles wrought by the relics of Saints. — 
Rhemish Test. Acts 19. 

6. Images. Images are to be reverenced and worshipped. 
Cone. Trent, Sess. 25. With the same worship which belongeth 
to the Saints. Bellarmin Imag. Sanct. Lib. 2. Cap. 21, 23. 

The wood of the cross is worthy of great worship and rev- 
erence. Rhemish Annotat. John 19. The image of Ch'rist upon 
the cross is to be honored by kneeling before it and adoring it. 
Rhemish Annotat. Hebrews 1 1 . 

It is holy and venerable to cross the forehead, and their meats, 
&c. Rhemish Annotat. Luke 24. The sign of the cross drives 
away devils, heals diseases, and sanctifies creatures. Rhemish 
Annotat. 1 Timothy 4. Bellarmin Imag. Cap. 30. 

7. Pilgrimages and processions. Pilgrimages to Rome, &c. 
. and processions in memory of Saints, are godly works. Concil. 

Trent. Sess. 25. 

20* 



234 DAMNABLE HERESIES 

8. Festivals, Holy days are more sacred than others ; and 
the memorial of them is necessary. Holy days must be dedi- 
cated unto Saints for their Avorship ; and must be kept the same 
as the Lord's day. Rhemish Annotat. Galatians 4. 

9. The Virgin Mary, The Virgin Mary was born without 
sin ; vowed virginity before annunciation ; her body was assumed 
into heaven; receives the highest kind of religious honor, 
Fulke's Annotat. Luke 1. 

11. Intercession and mediation of Christ. They unite 
the Virgin Mary and all Saints, as inferior Mediators with the 
only Advocate Jesus Christ the righteous. 

HL The sacraments. 

1. Sacraments are not seals. The Romanists deny that Sa 
craments are pledges of the promises of God. Bellar. Sacram. 
Lib. 1. Cap. 14. 

2. Opus Ojperatum. Sacraments give grace by the work 
wrought; and justification. Rhemish Annotat. Hebrews 10. 

3. Sacraments indelible. There is a spiritual mark imprinted 
in the souls of the receivers, which never can be blotted out by 
iin, apostacy, or heresy, by the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirm- 
ation, and Orders. Rhemish Annotat. 2 Corinthians 1. — ConciL 
Trent. Sess. 7. Can. 9. — ^Bellarmin Sacram. Lib. 2. Cap. 19. 

4. Number of the Sacraments. The Papists contend that in 
addition to Baptism and the Lord's Supper, there are five Sacra- 
ments, Confirmation, Penance, Matrimony, Orders, and Extreme 
Unction ; and if any man say that they are not of Christ's in- 
stitution, he is accursed. Concil. Trent, Sess. 7. Can. 1. 

5. Baptism. The Romanists define Baptism to be actual 
Regeneration. Baptism is necessary to salvation. In case of 
necessity, Laymen, women, and even unbaptized Pagans may 
baptize. Bells must be baptized. All sins are pardoned and 
eradicated at Baptism. Concil. Trent, Sess. 5. 

6. The hordes supper. In the Eucharist, under the forms of 
bread and wine, by the efficacy of the words spoken by the Priest, 
IS really, verily, and substantially present, the natural body and 
blood of Christ. Rhemish Annotat. Matthev/ 26.— The substance 



OF POPERY. 235 

of bread and wine remaineth not after the consecration. The 
bread once consecrated, however long preserved, isthe very body 
and blood of Christ. Concil. Trent, Sess. 13. Can. 1, 2, 4. 

7. Sacrament in one kind. Christians are not bound to re- 
ceive the Sacrament in both kinds. Concil. Trent, Sess. 21, CaiL 
2. Rhemish Annotat, John 6. 

8. Adoration of the Mass wafer. The Eucharist must re- 
ceive the worship which is due to the true God. Concil. Trent^ 
Sess. 13. Can. 6. 

9. The Mass. Christ offered up his own body and blood in 
sacrifice, under the forms of bread and wine to God his Father. 
Concil. Trent, Sess. 22. Cap. 1. — The mass is a propitiatory 
sacrifice, available, ex opere operato, by the very work wrought, 
for pardon of all sins. Concil. Trent, Sess. 22. Can. 3. — Mass 
may be said for all the living, Pagans, Infidels, the present and 
absent. Rhemish Annotat. 1 Timothy 2. — Private Masses are 
lawful. Concil. Trent, Sess. 22. Can. 8.— The Mass must be 
said in the Latin tongue, and with a very low voice. Bellarmin 
Missa, Cap. 11, 12. — The canon of the Mass is filled with idol- 
atry and worship of saints ; containing forty direct blasphemies ; 
and five absolute practical contradictions to the Scriptures, with 
eight cautionary mandates not less impious than absurd. Canon 
of the Mass. 

10. Penance. Christ instituted the sacrament of Penance. 
Rhemish Annotat. John 20. Penance is appointed as a remedy 
for sins after baptism. — The form of Penance consists in the 
words of absolution pronounced by the Priest ; the matter of it 
is the contrition, confession, and satisfaction of the penitent. All 
mortal sins must be confessed secretly to the Priest. Concil. 
Trent, Sess. 14. Cap. 2, 3, 6. God forgives the sin, but reserves 
the punishment, which may be redeemed by good works here, 
or by the pains of purgatory, or by penance enjoined by the 
Priest, or by the good works of others on our behalf Rhemish 
Annotat. Colossians 1. — Repentance and amendment are not 
sufficient to obtain reconciliation with God without outward cor- 
rection; and penal satisfactory good works. The Pope, 



236 - DAMNABLE HERESIES 

Romish Prelates and Priests, hare power to grant pardons and 
indulgences. Rhemish Annotat. 2 Cormiuitirss ^ Concil. Trent, 
Sess. 25. 

1 1. Matrimony. Matrimony is a Sacrament instituted by God. 
The Pope can dispense with the divine law respecting mar- 
riages forbidden by consanguinity and affinity, and also enact 
other relationships which may be precluded from intermarriage, 
Concil. Trent, Sess. 24. Can. 3. 

Virginity is preferable to marriage. Rhemish Annotat. 1 Co- 
rinthians 7. 

12. Confirmation. Confirmation is a Sacrament. Concil. Trent, 
Sess. 7. Can. 1. The matter of it is oil mixed with balm put 
upon the forehead. Rhemish Annotat. Acts 8. The form of it is 
the sign of the cross. The minister of it is the Prelate. The 
efficacy of it is this, that it gives confirmation and increase of 
grace. The ceremonies of confirmation are these. The Prelate 
breathes upon the pot of chrism ; then he salutes it, " Ave sanctum 
Chrisma!" next he kisses it; after which he strikes the con- 
firmed person with his hand to teach him patience ; then his 
forehead is bound up, that the chrism may not run ofi", and the 
subject lose the grace of God. The person must not wash his 
head or face for seven days after the ceremony. Bellarmin Con- 
firmat. Cap. 13. 

13. Orders. Holy Orders are a Sacrament of seven degrees. 
The Priesthood; Deaconship; Sub'deaconship; Exorcist; Aco- 
luthus; Reader; and Ostiary. A Priest once ordained can 
never lose his orders. Concil. Trent, Sess. 23. Can. 3. Sess. 24. 
Can. 4. They are not Priests or Deacons who are not ordained 
by Prelates. Bellarmin Sacram. Ord. Cap. 11. The hands of 
persons ordained are anointed with oil ; and their crowns shaved. 
The space of the shaven crown must be enlarged according to 
the order of the priesthood. Bellarmin Cap. 12. 

14. Extreme Unction. Extreme Unction is a Sacrament. 
Concil. Trent, Sess. 14. Can. 1. The matter is olive oil conse- 
crated by the prelate ; which giveth health of body j and wipes 



OF POPERY. 237 

away the remains of sin. The Priest must anoint the five 
senses- the veins; and the feet. Bellarmin Cap. 7, 8, 10. 
IV. Benefits of redemption. 

1. Faith. Faith doth not justify as an instrument, but as a 
proper and true cause, by the dignity, worthiness, and merito- 
rious work. Rhemish Annotat. Romans 3. Faith is not the 
only cause of justification, but also hope, charity, alms deeds, 
and other virtues. Rhemish Annotat. Romans 8. 

2. Justification. Men are not justified by the righteousness ojt 
Christ and the remission of sin. Concil. Trent, Sess. 6. Can. 11. 
Confidence in God^s grace and Salvation is the faith of Devils, 
and not of Apostles. Rhemish Annotat. 1 Corinthians 9. 

3. Good Works. If any man say that the precepts of God are 
impossible to be kept, let him be accursed. Concil. Trent, Sess. 
6. Can. 1 8- The Papists make but three commandments in the 
first table, expressly to exclude the second. Catharinus says, 
that the second commandment was but temporary, and to continue 
only for a time. Opuscul. de Imagin. Men can do more than 
is prescribed, and may give to others their works of supereroga- 
tion. Rhemish Annotat. 1 Corinthians 9. Good works are 
necessary as efficient causes with faith of our salvation. A man 
by good works is justified. A just man in good works doth not 
sin venially. By the good works appointed by the church, men 
are justified. Concil. Trent, Sess. 6. Cap. 10, Can. 25. Good 
works obtain the merits of Christ ; purge our sins ; and are 
meritorious. Rhemish Annotat. Colossians 1. 1 Peter 4. Romans 
2. There are two kinds of merit of congruity and condignity. 
Rhemish Annotat. Acts 10. Good works merit eternal life in 
the highest degree. Bellarmin, Cap. 16. 

4. Indulgences and Pardons of Jubilee. Indulgence signifies 
the pardon of sins which remain after the remission of faults. 
The sufferings and satisfactions of the Saints may be applied to 
others, by the Priests, who dispense that spiritual treasure, and 
thereby absolve from all sins and the punishment of them ; and 
also change oaths, vows, and laws,, if they wilL Indulgence 



238. DAMNABLE HERESIES 

liberates men from the guilt and punishment of sin, before both 
God and men. Bellarmin Indulg. Cap. 7. Prop. 4. 

There are five kinds of Indulgences. 1. A release of penance 
for forty days. 2. An indulgence or ransom of the punishment 
for the third or fourth part of sins. 3. Indulgence for the whole 
punishment; and for ten or twenty thousand years. Every 
mortal sin requires a penance of three or seven years, so that 
many men must undergo penance for many thousands of years ; 
which may be satisfied by the pains of Purgatory in a short 
time. 4. Indulgences may be granted during any time of life, or 
at the point of death. 5. Some are temporary in duration ; and 
others are perpetual in reference to certain places, altars, &c. or 
to certain things, rosaries, relics, and other similar articles. Bel- 
larm.in. Cap. 7. 

Indulgences may be granted to a sinner in a state of sin ; and 
are profitable to those who will not perform the penance and 
works enjoined, and who rest in the satisfaction of others. Bel- 
larmin, Cap. 13. Quest 1, 5. 

Indulgences profit the dead ; for the Pope may absolve the 
souls in purgatory, because they belong to his jurisdiction. 
Medina Disput. Indulg. Cap. 34. Indulgences only profit the 
dead for whom they are particularly intended. Bellarmin, Cap, 
1 4. Quest. 6. The Pope can release a living man from the 
purgatory to which he would otherwise be subject. Bellarmin, 
Cap. 6. The voluntary punishment of this life is more eflfectual 
to expiate sin, than the most grievous pains of purgatory. 2r. Peter 
Soto. Dist. 21. Quest. 2. Artie. 1. 

Latimer offered this characteristic argument against Romish 
indulgences and purgatory ; proving that they were both a de- 
lusive cheat. That renowned Martyr told his sanguinary per- 
secutors, that he would rather be in purgatory than in the Lol- 
lard's Tower, that doleful place of anguish in which Bonner 
incarcerated his christian victims. 

Latimer gave the following reasons for preferring purgatory 
to the Popish Prelate's dungeon. In Bonner's castle of misery, 
said the old Reformer — '* I might die for want of food and drink; 



OF POPERV. > 239 

I should receive no kindness ; I might lose my patience ; I 
should be in peril of death and without surety of salvation ; I 
might murmur against God, and displease him ; I might be 
condemned to perpetual prison ; and be made to carry a fagot ; I 
might be separated from Christ, be a member of the devil, and 
an inheritor of hell. Now if I were in Purgatory none of those 
things could befall me. Besides, when I was in the Lollard's 
tower, my Lord Bishop and his chaplains could manacle me by 
night, strangle me, and say I hanged myself; drag me to their 
tribunal, and judge and condemn me after their fashion. None 
of which evils could do they unto me if I were in Purgatory ; 
and therefore I would rather be in purgatory than in Bonner's 
prison the Lollards' Tower." 

From this concise exposition of the "damnable heresies" of 
Popery, two inferences are deducible. 

L The dogmas of Romanism are contrary to the especial de- 
sign of the Gospel. 

One object of the gospel is this ; to discover to sinful men, 
how God may be glorified in human salvation, and by what 
means the sinner may become a partaker of it. In the holy 
scriptures it is constantly and every where inculcated, that Jesus 
Christ is the only and perfect cause of our salvation. Isaiah 45 : 
21—25. Matthew 11: 28. John 3: 16, 36. Acts 4: 12, and 
16: 31. Romans 10: 9. 1 John 2: 1, 2. The Papists affirm 
that Christ did not make plenary satisfaction for all the sins of 
the saved ; and that the merit of works is established. They 
ascribe works of supererogation to some persons, which they 
assert it is the prerogative of the Roman Pontiff to dispense at 
his pleasure, by granting indulgences. They attribute the full 
cleansing of the soul from sins, not to the blood and spirit of 
Christ, but to the fire of purgatory, and they acknowledge other 
intercessors or mediators whom they invoke besides Christ. 
Thus the Romanists do not acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ 
to be the only and exclusive cause of eternal salvation ; and 
therefore their doctrine is contrary to the essential design of th<5 



240 PAltfNABLE HERESIES 

Gospel, because they have devised other means of redeeming 
sinful men than Christ and genuine faith in him. 

Another design of the Gospel includes the application of the 
Redeemer's salvation to mankind, for which, illumination of the 
mind and a changed and holy will ar^ requisite. The former 
is indispensable, because without it man can neither apprehend 
correctly, nor be convinced, that a knowledge of those celestial 
truths is requisite to salvation. Ephesians 1 : 17, 18. Psalm 19: 
8, 9. 2 Peter 1 : 19. But the Romish Hierarchy interdict 
the perusal of the Sacred Scriptures, which is the only means of 
attaining the knowledge of those truths which God has revealed. 
Wherefore the Roman Pontiff has so acted, that ignorance is 
universal throughout his dominions ; which is the cause why 
implicit faith only is required to procure salvation. Hence it is 
evident that the doctrines of Popery are adverse to illumination. 

Nor is a changed and holy will less necessary to the sinner, 
if he would partake of eternal salvation ; whence that is also one 
design of the Gospel, to restore not only the intellect but the 
will of the sinner to the divine image ; otherwise no man can 
enter the kingdom of heaven. Ephesians 4: 21, 24. The Holy 
Spirit also operates upon the sinner by the word of God ; John 
17: 17. 2 Timothy 3: 16, 17. John 8 : 31, 32. Psalm 119. 
From which testimonies of the sacred oracles, it is evident, that 
the use of the divine word is essential to the true sanctification of 
men. Therefore as the Popes prohibit all persons from the 
perusal of the Scriptures, they thereby evince, that their doctrine 
is opposed to human holiness ; because by grasping and conceal- 
ing the divine word, they deprive men of the true law of their 
sanctification. How can man conform his life to that most per- 
fect divine lav/ ; and how can he walk in the footsteps of Christ, 
who hath left his immaculate life to us as an example; if the 
book is taken away, in which the most holy will of God is re- 
vealed, and the whole history of Christ is narrated ? But as the 
rule of true sanctification is taken away from man by the Rom- 
ish Priesthood, it follows that they counteract evangelical hol> 
ness. 



OF POPERY. 241 

The holy Scriptures not only teach the absolute necessity of 
holiness, but also require a constant progression in it. Hebrews 
12: 14. Titus 2: 12. 2 Corinthians 7:1. But those claims are 
totally abrogated by the merely external and momentary purity 
which Romanism enjoins. If Papists who profess to receive the 
doctrines of the Pope w^ere convinced, that true faith in Christ, 
and increasing purity of heart, and the sanctification of the whole 
man, body and soul, were the only means to obtain eternal sal- 
vation, they would not vainly squander their money for indul- 
gences, and absolutions, and pilgrimages, and pay the price for 
deceitful soul-masses ! Men would easily then acknowledge, 
that those qualifications which the Papacy holds to be suf- 
ficient for the acquisition of eternal life, confession of sin, and 
attrition of heart before a Priest, with his absolution, cannot in- 
sure an entrance into the heavenly kingdom. Therefore as the 
Roman priests urge their devotees neither to know the true 
method to obtain salvation, nor to obtain genuine internal sanc- 
tification of heart, and amendment of life, flowing from faith in 
Jesus, according to the only rule of the holy scriptures, divine 
perfection, and Christ's example ; it follows, that the Papal doc- 
trines are altogether opposed, not only to christian sanctification, 
but also to that progressive holiness which the Gospel demands. 
Thus it is evident, that the Roman Priesthood do not acknowl- 
edge the Lord Jesus Christ as the only and very perfect cause 
of eternal salvation ; that their doctrine is opposed to mental illu- 
mination ; that Popery counteracts personal holiness : and conse- 
quently, that the doctrines of Romanism are directly contrary to 
the especial design of " the glorious Gospel of the one blessed God." 

2. Popery is altogether derogatory to the glory of Christ. 

The gracious Redeemer, in his mediatorial work for the child- 
ren of men, has exemplified his infinite love, goodness, all-suffi- 
ciency, and power ; whoever therefore teaches or does any thing 
by which those perfections of the mighty Saviour are not ac- 
knowledged, or rather are denied, such doctrine or act is inju- 
rious to the Saviour's honor and majesty. 

By those perfections, the Lord Jesus holds the relation of 
21 



242 DAMP^ABLE HERESIES OF POPERY. 

Head and Governor to his Church, who acknowledge him as 
their Sovereign : for justice and power appertain to him in a 
manner which no mortal can claim ; hence they who derogate 
from his rights and power in the church, divest him of his inhe- 
rent glory. 

The prophetical, sacerdotal, and regal offices, belong exclu- 
sively to Christ, and by the exercise of them he is absolutely a 
most perfect Saviour. 

Jesus Christ is the supreme Teacher in his church. In con- 
tradiction to which evangelical axiom ; the Romanists affirm, 
that faith depends upon the authority of the church, that the in- 
terpretation of the Sacred Scriptures belongs only to the Pope 
and a General council ; that the Scriptures are not a perfect rule 
of faith and holiness ; and that they are not sufficiently clear to 
make kno\^^l all things necessary to salvation. Thus the Roman- 
ists deny the perfection of "the only and perfect oracles of 
God." 

The Papists also detract from the priesthood of Christ : for 
they join man to Christ in the work of salvation ; they add the 
purgatorial sin to the cleansing of the blood of Jesus ; they abro- 
gate the one sacrifice of Christ by their offering of the Mass ; 
they exterminate the all-sufficiency of Christ's merits by their 
works of supererogation ; they obliterate the sole mediatorship 
of Christ by their Saints, whom they worship and invoke ; and 
they efface the doctrine of justification by faith in Immanuel, by 
their vows of poverty, chastity, and blind obedience to the 
Priesthood ; by their fasting and almsgivings, and other works 
which they proclaim to be meritorious of the divine favor and 
of heavenly joy. 

The kingly office of Christ is equally usurped by the Pope ; 
who arrogates to be the Vicegerent of God on earth, and who 
by his combined supremacy and infallibility, in former ages, did 
appear to exercise the attributes of the Godhead. Wherefore 
those doctrines and acts which thus attach to the Roman Pontiff 
the attributes of *' Jesus, the Son of God," are derogatory to the" 
Redeemer's glory: and consequently, the cardinal doctrines of 



NOTES. 



243 



Popery are the " damnable heresies of false teachers, denying 
the Lord who bought them ; 2 Peter 2:1; who shall bring 
upon themselves swift destruction." 



NOTES. 



CREED OF POPE PIUS IV. 

''In December, 1564, Pope Pius IV. issued abrief summary of the doc- 
trinal decisions of the council of Trent, in the form of a creed, usually- 
called, after himself, * Pope Pius's Creed.' Since that time, it has 
been considered in every part of the world, as an accurate and explicit 
summary of the Roman faith. Papists publicly repeat and testify their 
assent to it, without restriction or qualification." It is thus expressed. 

" I, N. believe and profess, with a firm faith, all, and every one of the 
things which are contained in the symbol of faith, which is used in the 
holy Roman church. 

" I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and 
earth, and of all things visible and invisible ; and in one Lord Jesus 
Christ, the only begotten Son of God ; horn of the Father before all worlds ; 
God of God ; Light of Light ; true God of true God ; begotten, not made ; 
consubstantial to the Father, by whom all things were made ; who, for 
us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incar- 
nate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man ; was 
crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered, and was buried, and 
rose again the third day, according to the scriptures, and ascended into 
heaven; sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come again wath 
glory to judge the living and the dead, of whose kingdom there will be 
no end : and in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Life-giver, who proceeds 
from the Father and the Son ; who. together with the Father and the Son, 
is adored and glorified, who spoke by the prophets : and one holy cath- 
olic and apostolic church. I confess one baptism for the remission of 
sins ; and I expect the resurrection of the body, of the dead — mortuorum^ 
and the life of the world. Amen. 

" I most firmly admit and embrace apostolical and ecclesiastical tra- 
ditions, and all other constitutions and observances of the same church. 

" I also admit the sacred scriptures, according to the sense which the 
holy mother church has held, and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge 
of the true sense and interpretation of the holy scriptures : nor will I 
ever take or interpret them otherwise, than according to the unanimous 
consent of the Fathers. 



244 NOTES. 

" I profess also, that there are truly and properly seven sacraments of 
the new law, instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord, and for the salvation 
of mankind, though all are not necessary for every one: baptism, con- 
firmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, order, and matrimony, 
and that they confer grace ; and of these, baptism, confirmation, and 
order, cannot be reiterated without sacrilege. 

" I also receive and admit the ceremonies of the Catholic church, re- 
ceived and approved in the solemn administration of all the above said 
sacraments. 

"I receive and embrace all and every one of the things which have 
been defined and declared in the holy council of Trent, concerning origi- 
nal sin and justification. 

" I profess likewise, that in the mass is ojffered to God a true, proper, 
and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead ; and that in the 
most holy sacrifice of the eucharist, there is truly, really, and substan- 
tially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our 
Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made a conversion of the whole 
substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the 
wine into the blood, which conversion the Catholic Church calls tran- 
substantiation. 

" I confess also, that under either kind alone, whole and entire, Christ 
and a true sacrament is received. 

'' I constantly hold that there is a purgatory, and that the souls detained 
therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful. 

" Likewise, that the saints reigning together with Christ, are to be 
honored and invocated, that they offer prayers to God for us, and that 
their relics are to be venerated. 

" I most firmly assert, that_ the image of Christ, and of the mother of 
God, ever virgin, and also of the other saints, are to be had and retained: 
and that due honour and veneration are to be given them. 

" I also affirm, that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the 
church, and that the use of them is most wholesome to Christian people. 

'' I acknowledge the holy Catholic and apostolical Roman church, the 
mother and mistress of all churches ; and I promise and swear true obe- 
dience to the Roman bishop, the successor of St. Peter, the prince of the 
apostles, and vicar of Jesas Christ. 

" I also profess and undoubtedly receive, all other things delivered, 
defined, and declared by the sacred canons, and general councils, and 
particularly by the holy council of Trent; and likewise T also condemn, 
reject, and anathematize all things contrary thereto, and all heresies 
whatsoever, condemned, rejected'^ and anathematized by the church. 

" This true Catholic faith, out of which none can be saved, which I 
now freely profess, and truly hold, I, N. promise, vow, and swear, most 



NOTES. 245 

constat) tly to hold and profess the same whole and entire, with God's as- 
sistance, lo the end of my life : and to procure, as far as lies in my power, 
that the same shall be held, toAcght, and preached by all who are under me, or 
are intrusted to my care^ by virtue of my office. So help rue God, and these 
holy gospels of God.'^ 

''In this creed, which is merely the echo of the council, two things 
are observable, 1. Its intolerant principle, utterly denying salvation to 
all who differ from the Church of Rome. 2. The unrestricted adherence 
avozoed to the institutes of preceding councils. To all their canons and 
decrees, as well as to those published at Trent, the Papist promises his 
obe<^ience, a sweeping declaration, which binds him, in the nineteenth 
century, to admit the revolting absurdities and iniquitous enactments of 
the dark ages. It requires of him to maintain, that all oaths which op- 
pose the utility of the church, and the constitutions of the fathers, should 
rather be called perjuries than oaths, and that heretics are not only to be 
anathematized, but deprived of all property, arid civil rights, and delivered 
over to the secular power, to be punished and extirpated. Such are the un- 
repealed decisions of general councils, which every Papist, in every 
country, " professes, and undoubtedly receives." 



POPISH EXORCISM. 



The ordinances of Christianity are divine appointments, instituted to 
enlighten and to sustain the church, which Jesus the Son of God, its ex- 
alted head, has purchased with his own blood. To desecrate them, dis- 
honours the supreme Legislator. The celebration of them in their 
purity and strictness, is obligatory upon every Christian disciple. The\' 
are designed practically to illustrate, and to preserve in lasting remem- 
brance, by symbols, the cardinal doctrines of revealed theology. Hence, 
the perversion of them, or the making of the commandments of God of 
none effect by human traditions, is a transgression condemned by the 
Judge of the quick and the dead. 

Baptism and the eucharist are the only authoritative symbolical insti- 
tutions of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our present inquiry is restricted to 
the Lord's injunction, which he gave to his Apostles — " Go ye and teach 
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost." From which command, the Papists affirm, 
that in baptism there is an implicit vow of obedience to the Pope of 
Rome. This requirement of abject submission to the Papal jurisdiction, 
irrespective of all evangelical authority, totally invalidates the Romish 
ceremonies, as having any connexion with the Christian ordinance. 

The question for decision is this: Shall the ceremonies of the Roman 
Priests be acknowledged as Christian baptism 1 or in other words — t)id 

Ol* ' 



246 NOTES 

the Lord Jesus Christ enact that the sigD of the cross should be marked 
upon the forehead, accompanied with the anointing of oil, and the rub- 
bing of a Priest's spittle, united with the holding of wax tapers, upon the 
promise of sponsors 1 In reply we observe, that these offensive rites are 
not derived from the Saviour's institution; and that they do not symbol- 
ically develop the doctrines especially comprised in the baptism institu- 
ted by the New Testament. 

Wherein do the Roman ceremonies disclose their essential distinc- 
tions from the gracious Redeemer's prescription *? 

Pure water is the only element or material which appertains to the 
evangelical ordinance. John "came baptizing with water. ''^ In the 
centurion's house, Peter said : '' Can any man forbid water, that these 
should be baptized V In opposition to this simple form, the Papists 
have enacted a great variety of absurd and superstitious customs. 

The first is the Exorcism, to drive the Devil out of the person bap- 
tized. To effect which expulsion, the Priest breathes three times upon 
the subject's face, as they say, to blow Satan away and, most impious fal- 
lacy ! to inflate the child or the adult with the Holy Ghost, instead of the 
Devil, whom they have expelled. The Priest then makes the sign of a 
cross with his dry thumb both on the forehead and breast. Then he 
puts some salt into the mouth, commands Satan to come out; and makes 
another sign of the cross on the forehead. After which superstitious 
observances, the Priest again exorcises the evil spirit, and next rubs the 
mouth, ears, and nostrils, with his saliva. 

The Priest then proceeds to the font, and taking up the consecrated 
water, as it is called, pours it on the head three times in the form of a 
cross; which is followed by making a cross with oil on the top of the 
head ; and placing a lighted taper in the hand of an adult, or into the 
hand of the infant's sponsors. These acts are a little varied in reference 
to a person of mature age, for he receives the sign of the cross, which is. 
the apocalyptic mark of the Roman Beast, on his forehead, ears, eyes, 
nostrils, mouth, breast, shoulders, and three others also over his whole 
person. 

With these external ceremonies is conjoined a most marvellous and 
incredible doctrine ; without the belief and operation of which, as the 
Romanists say, their whole ritual is not only vitiated, but nullified. It 
is one of the corner-stones which supports that haughty, but tottering 
superstructure, " Babylon the Great ;" that the " efficacy of every Sa^ 
crament depends upon the intention of the officiating Priest ," for the 
councils of Florence and Trent thus decreed — "If any man shall say 
that when the Priests make and confer the Sacraments, the intention of 
doing what the Church does, be not required, let him be anathema." 
The abridgment of the Cbri-iian doctrine, a volume of paramount 



NOTES. 247 

authority among the Romanists, thus explains this wonderful assump- 
tion, concerning that particular superstition. '' Question. Is the inten- 
tion of the Priest to do what Christ ordained a condition, without which, 
the Sacrament subsisteth not 1 Answer. It is ; as also the intention of 
the receiver, to receive what Christ ordained, if he be at years of un- 
derstanding. Question. Why do you say if he be at years of understand- 
ing'? Answer. Because for infants, in the Sacrament of baptism, the in- 
tention of the church sufficeth." 

In contradiction to this practice and to this canon, it is an obvious 
sensible fact, cognizable by the eyes and ears, that neither in the spirit, 
letter, form, element, meaning, or design of the Popish superstitious rit- 
ual, is the appointment of our Lord Jesus Christ exemplified. 

Ought those Romish ceremonies to be acknowledged as the evangelical 
ordinance % 

Jesus Christ is sole and supreme Lawgiver to his church ; and any 
potentate who arrogates the prerogative to change, amend, or add to 
his laws, or annul them, makes an antichristian assumption. That the 
Roman rites of exorcism, with the sign of the cross, are no part of the 
original institution by Jesus the Lord of all, requires only an examina- 
tion of the New Testament to verify ; because, neither in the sacred vol- 
ume, nor in primitive ecclesiastical history, is there any mention of their 
practice, or even an allusion to their existence. 

From the falsifications, erasures, and forgeries, made in the records of 
antiquity by the Monks of the dark ages to sanction the Papal usurpa- 
tions ; it is extremely difficult to ascertain correctly the precise era when 
many of the idolatrous and superstitious rites of Popery were first intro- 
duced. It seems, however, that the present universally practised mode 
of using and aflixing the sign of the cross upon the inhabiters of Baby- 
lon the Great, was contrived about the time when Cyprian flourished ; 
at which period the church had become essentially deteriorated. It is, 
therefore, ample cause for rejecting the Romish institution, that it is not 
a part of the original appointment of Christ. 

But there is a standing query retorted against the general position, that 
the Papal exorcism is not the christian ordinance. As the Church of 
Rome in the apostolic age was a renowned and integral portion of the 
whole christian world, it is asked — when did that community lose its re- 
lationship 1 and at what period did it become totally divested of its prior 
character, so that all its acts are antichristian and condemned '? 

This question presupposes the melancholy truth — that there may be 
such an apostacy from the faith, and devotion, and obedience, which Je- 
hovah enjoins, that every pretension to Christianity by the backslider 
who is guilty of that dereliction, would be equally incorrect and invalid 
— and it also implies, that the ancient church of P»,ome has thus departed 



248 NOTES. 

ft-om the living God. The precise time of that defection cannot now be 
determined by us ; yet it appears lo be undeniable, that the commence- 
ment of the mysterious 1260 years, when the "Beast" assumed the seat 
and authority of the Dragon, and also drove the true church into the 
wilderness, is that definite period. 

An example from the Old Testament will lucidly unfold this subject. 
All the twelve tribes of Israel were the subjects of God's covenant ; but , 
the instructive query is this — Did they continue in that relation 1 If not, 
when did they cease to constitute a part of the Lord's people 1 We speak 
of the body politic, not of isolated individuals ; and we are assured by 
the Prophets, not only of the melancholy fact, but also that the irrecover- 
able alienation commenced and was decisive, when the calves were set 
up for idol-worship in Bethel and Dan. 

The question is not ; whether there are nominal Papists who will have 
their part in the inheritance among the sanctified; because they are ad- 
dressed Revelation 18 : 4 j and urged to withdraw from all communion 
with Babylon the Great ; but this is the true inquiry— Is the idolatrous 
ritual of Popery an integral part of Christianity 1 

Many Israejites belonged to the Lord God of their Fathers j and even 
in the days of Elijah, seven thousand of them did not bow the knee to 
Baal; but the impious superstitions of the calves, and of the Zidonians, 
were directly opposed to the temple worship ; and it is believed, that there 
is not a single instance discoverable in the history of the ten tribes after 
their separation from Judah and Benjamin ; in which one of those false 
sacrificers was recognized as a true Priest, or his ministrations were 
characterized, otherwise than as gross idolatrv^ 

Thus, the Christian church constantly became more corrupted by hu- 
man traditions and ecclesiastical assumptions, all originating in priest- 
craft : Gradually, the Roman pontiff usurped a godlike sway over sa- 
cred laws, times, and worship ; and arrogated to himself a controlling 
direction of the consciences of Christians. That ungodly power was 
augmented by the convulsions of the Roman empire ; until the full evo- 
lution of the papal claims appeared in the pontificate of Boniface. Then 
was fully developed at Rome, that "working of Satan, and the mystery 
of iniquity :" and from that era, the Romish system has been marked by 
all the loathsome attributes of that Mother of Harlots and abomina- 
tions of the earth which John in Patmos saw, and which Popery has al- 
ways and universally exemplified. Hence, if Romanism be a system of 
idolatry, with all its inseparable wickedness, it is no more possible that 
a practitioner of its impious rites can be a Christian, than that a priest 
of Baal could have been a copyist of Aaron, Phinehas, and Zadok. 

But another question is asked — What church regularly excommuni- 



NOTES. 249 

cated the Romanists 7 and if that has not been done, how can the validity 
of their ceremonial exorcism, which they denominate Baptism, be disputed^ 

This question involves many perplexing topics connected with modern 
ecclesiastical government and discipline. Two preliminary points, how- 
ever, demand notice. Which was the true church subsequent to the 
full development of the Papal usurpations, the Roman priesthood and 
their idolatrous devotees, or the various Protestants of every age from 
the seventh century, who are generically included under the title of the 
Lord's *' two witnesses, that prophesy 1260 years clothed in sackcloth V* 
At the period of the Reformation, was the domain of the Beast, as the 
Papists mendaciously assume, the only, and the whole true church of 
God, or was the Roman community, as then and now constituted, no part 
of the Saviour's mystical body % This is the grand principle of the whole 
investigation, and the test by which all controversies between Protestants 
and Papists must finally be decided. 

" The testimony of Jesus, which is the spirit of prophecy," emphatical- 
ly declares ; that Popery is the seven headed and ten horned beast, who 
*' opens his mouth in blasphemy, and who makes war with the saints, 
and that all worship him," except the sincere followers of the Lamb. 
Revelation 13 : 1, 6 — 8. The servants of that ferocious deputy of the 
Dragon are known by the mark of the Beast ; and Popery is symbolized 
by the scarlet-colored Mystery, as a meretricious woman drunk with the 
blood of prophets, saints, and the martyrs of Jesus. Revelation 17: 6 j 
and 18: 24. All those woful prophetic pictures are corroborated by the 
unvarying testimony of nearly 1200 years. They are faithful delinea- 
tions of the Popish hierarchy ; and exact descriptions as attested by their 
own artists and historians. 

Therefore this is the essential inquiry, Were those Monks and Friars 
of all dignities and orders the true church of Christ? In the language 
of the original Reformers, we reply : T/iey were, and are, '' the Syna- 
gogue of Satan.^^ This answer is sustained by that remarkable vision 
of the Apostle John, recorded in the eighteenth chapter of the Revela- 
tion; where the destruction of Babylon is disclosed in all the extent and 
certainty of its accomplishment ; and the voice from heaven was heard 
commanding the people of God to " come out of her," that they might 
neither partake of her sins, nor receive of her plagues. We cannot be- 
lieve that the Lord's people would be required to withdraw from a true 
church, or that a genuine church of Christ can be accursed to utter ex- 
termination. 

This opinion is sanctioned by a review of the seven churches of Asia. 
Their imperfections were rebuked, and they were urged to repent and 
reform-— but until their candlestick was^removed out of its place, like 



250 NOTES. 

that of the church of Ephesus, or until, like the Laodiceans, they were 
cast off as utterly loathsome ; they remained a part of the Lord's mysti- 
cal body. Their rejection by Christ was followed by their extinction. 
A similar menaced curse and doom, and the same agonizing catastrophe, 
await the apostate church of Rome. 

This decision is also justified by our most erudite Theologians. Bale 
declares — " Neither the vows nor yet the priesthood of the Papists, are 
of the gospel, but of Antichrist." Whittingham asks — " How can God's 
glory be advanced by those things which antichristian superstition has 
invented to maintain and beautify idolatry ? what agreement can the 
superstitious inventions of men have with the pure word of God ?" Tilt- 
retin thus writes of the corruptions in the Roman ceremonies — " In refer- 
ence to their rites, we deny that the true doctrine of Baptism remains. 
They favour grave errors, which corrupt the ordinance of baptism, sub- 
stituting, in the place of amoral and mystical efficacy, the opus operatum 
and physical efficiency; and because they practically err, by the use of 
a foreign language, and by various superstitions, and useless and impi- 
ous rites which they have introduced, besides the institution of Christ, 
and which make a part" of their exorcism. He states four arguments 
against those Popish incantations. " The silence of scripture. The 
simplicity of the Christian institution. The silence of the ancient wri- 
ters. The testimony of Romanists against the antiquity and propriety of 
them. Those rites of the Papists are mixed with impiety and supersti- 
tion ; and contain idle follies which serve not fc?r edification, but trans- 
form the holy symbol into a theatrical exhibition." 

The fifth canon of the council of Trent concerning baptism, is in 
these words — " If any man shall say, that in the Roman church, which 
is the mother and mistress of all, there is not the true doctrirfe of Bap- 
tism, let him be anathema." As all the acts of that council were framed 
with direct reference to the opposing sentiments of the Reformers, it is 
evident from that canon, that the early Protestants did deny the scrip- 
tural character and authority of the Popish rites called Baptism, Upon 
that decretal, that master Theologian Chemnicius thus writes. " The 
principal part of the ministry is doctrine. Hence when the true doc- 
trine is so depraved, and corrupt opinions established, the ministry itself 
is changed ; and the ministry of them who corrupt doctrine must be re- 
linquished, because it is written. Beware of false prophets !" But the 
abandonment of the instructions of Roman Priests as grievous wolves, 
devouring the flock by their damnable heresies; and the admission of 
their defiling superstitions, equally impious and idolatrous, because they 
are craftily disguised under a Christian name, are a self-evident and 
mischievous absurdity. 

Heidauj who was styled, " the incomparable," thus lectures. " Roman 



I 



NOTES. 251 

exorcism is a rite by which the Exorcist commands the evil spirit to de- 
part from the subject ; and which was not instituted by Christ, nor by his 
Apostles, nor by any of their immediate successors; and it is not an in- 
different ceremony; for it is vain, disgraceful to the church, false, and 
impious. It is vain, for it neither perfects nor adorns baptism ; and is 
ineffectual, destitute of natural cause, and the command and promise of 
God. It is disgraceful to the church, as if the church generated persons 
possessed with the devil. Adjurations are addressed to persons, not to 
sins; and therefore it is a great and dangerous vanity. The rite is 
deceptive, for the exorcising Priest arrogates the power to eject Satan, 
which he possesses not. It is impiouSj for it is a flagrant abuse and dis- 
honour to God." 

Voetius says;—'' In the first 600 years after Christ — no one church, noi 
one martyr, no one confessor, no one family, not one member of the church 
in any age, or in any part of the world, was properly and formally a Pa- 
pist." 

Jewel also presented the same testimony, and both declared to the Jes- 
uits whom they opposed, that if they could prove the contrary, they 
" would immediately become Papists." 

Richard Baxter declares — " The Papacy, as such, is false and anti- 
christian, and no true church of Jesus Christ. As soon as I shall see any 
certain proof, that the Catholic church has successively, from age to 
age, been Papists, I will turn Papist without delay. But it is most evi- 
dent in all antiquity, that for many hundred years after Christ, there was 
no church in being or known, which was centred in the Pope as Head 
or universal Governor ; or in Rome as their Mistress." 

Two objections are offered to those unequivocal testimonies. It is al- 
leged, that the Reformers admitted the validity of the Roman ceremo- 
nial as the Christian ordinance ; and also, that if the Popish rite be not 
of evangelical authority, then the Reformers themselves were not bap- 
tized ; and the Protestants would, in fact, be divested of their character 
as a legitimate part of the visible church. 

To the averment, that the Reformers of the sixteenth century admitted 
the validity of the Roman exorcism as Christian baptism, it may be re- 
plied, that the evidence already adduced does not sanction that opinion. 
Besides, those revered Christians are not our infallibly inspired Teach- 
ers ; and we must follow them no further than they followed Christ. 
They are not unerring guides ; and cannot, therefore, be recognized as 
oracular Expositors of Christian theology. 

In reference, however, to the baptism of the Reformers themselves, and 
the chasm which it is supposed a denial of the validity of the Roman ex- 
orcism would make between the primitive and the modern churches, the 
objection is altogether inefficient. That pretended difficulty implies that 



252 NOTES. 

grand heresy, that the external rite of baptism is essential to salvution, 
which is a genuine papistical delusion, through the operation of which 
the Romai^ists bewilder and enslave their Devotees. It also adverts not 
to the extraordinary circumstances in which those immortal Christian 
worthies were placed. The first laborers in the Protestant vineyard, 
Luther, Zuingle, Calvin, Cranmer, and Knox, witli their almost peer- 
less associates, were situated something like the forerunner of Imman- 
uel. John certainly was never baptized, although he was specially di- 
rected to preach the baptism of repentance. His commission was from 
God, and therefore superseded all terrestrial and inferior appointments. 
The Reformers, who were the pioneers of the latter day glory, to " pre- 
pare in the desert a highway for our God," did not receive their call by 
the same miraculous manifestation ; yet their duties were not in the or- 
dinary course ; and therefore they constitute an exception to the general 
rule, respecting the initiatory ordinance into the church, and other topics 
which are connected with the government and regular administration of 
the affairs of the gracious Redeemer's Kingdom. 

It should also be recollected, that after all the explorations of the sub- 
ject which can be made in reference to the Popish ceremonial, we do not 
arrive one step nearer the precise requirements which that objection im- 
plies. The admission of the validity of Roman baptism necessarily in- 
volves the legitimate authority of those who appointed the Popish ritual;' 
but who can be certain, in conformity with the canon of the councils of 
Florence and Trent, that any one of the Reformers, according to the 
Papal doctrine of intention, was ever truly crossed at all 1 That depends 
upon the inscrutable fact ; not only that the Priests determined that their 
Sacrament, so called, should be truly administered in reference to the 
Reformers themselves : but also that the intention had been fully in opera- 
tion during the whole prior period, and throughout the whole ramified suc- 
cession from the Apostle Peter to the different individual Exorcists that 
performed the Popish rites over the galaxy of Christians, who adorned 
and illuminated the ecclesiastical hemisphere during the sixteenth cen- 
tury. The objection is equally futile and irrelevant. 

The Papacy, as it is now constituted, comprises the only church of the 
Redeemer ; or like Simon Magus, it has " neither part nor lot in this 
matter." No alternative exists. There is no half-way house, and no 
neutrality. It is utterly impossible for any man consistently to remain 
a nondescript in this holy warfare, semi-Protestant, and half Papist. Pro- 
testantism and Popery are at the antipodes. If the religion of the Re- 
formed be Christianity, then Romanism is both Pagan and antichristian 
idolatry. Papists admit, but Protestants deny the supremacy of the Ro- 
man Pontiff The religion of Protestants acknowledges the Lord of glory 
ao sole rn-ister and sovereign ; Popery is founded upon the godlike juris- 



NOTES. 253 

diction of the Pope ; to whom Papists submit unreservedly as the earthly 
substitute for God, and Heaven's Vicegerent. Protestants adhere to 
** the oracles of God" as the sole code of religious legislation ; the votaries 
of Rome avow the infallibility of the Papal bulls, canons, and decretals, 
which absolutely contradict, and as far as their power extends, totally 
abrogate or erase the divine laws. 

Of those Protestant denominations of Christians who have directly pro- 
mulged their declarations against Popery in the United States, the Reform- 
ed Dutch Church, the Episcopalians, and the Presbyterians, stand promi- 
nent. The Baptists and Congregationalists also all are decided adver- 
saries of the Papal claims, but as each of their churches acts indepen- 
dently ; their testimony, although equally inflexible, is more diversified. 

The Episcopalians, with the Methodists, on the Popish controversy, 
have adopted the same articles of faith. They declare, that the mass is 
*' a blasphemous fable, and a dangerous deceit.'* But if the mass be thus 
truly characterized, how can the exorcism, which is equally " a blas- 
phemous fable and a dangerous deceit," and enacted by the same anti- 
christian usurper, be a valid evangelical institute 7 In addition to that 
article of faith, the Episcopalians solemnly proclaim, that the doctrines 
of their book of Homilies respecting Popery are true ; than which, more 
disgusting and forceful delineations of the incurable idolatry and corrup- 
tion of Babylon the Great, cannot be found in the English language. 
They authoritatively announce, that the modern Romish superstitions 
are worse, and more wickedly absurd and soul-destroying, than any 
abominations which ever were practised among the ancient Heathen; 
and that the whole system of Popery is so irremediably evil, that it is 
accursed by the oracles of God, to the most direful overthrow, without 
any possibility of redemption. 

p The Presbyterian Confession of Faith affirms that some churches 
" have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but Syna- 
gogues of Satan.'* And that we may not mistake their exposition of the 
canon thus promulged, they refer us to Revelation 18 : 2. " Babylon 
the Great is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul 
spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." Here it is cate- 
gorically declared, that the Papacy is not a part of the church of Christ. 
Now it defies all human ingenuity and all Christian casuistry, to disclose 
how a false and impious ritual, performed by a Priest in the Synagogue 
of Satan, can be Christian baptism ; especially when it is remembered, 
that all those vain and farcical rites were invented by the Popes of Rome, 
arrtl their subordinate ecclesiastics; who, according to the same confes- 
sion of faith, are " that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, 
that exalteth himself in the Church against Christ and all that is called 
Ood," 

22 



254 NOTES. 

The Reformed Dutch Church are equally precise and determinate 
in reference to the general principles, and more definite in their appli- 
cation. Speaking of Popery, the Synod of Dordrecht say, that " the false 
church ascribes more power and authority to herself and her ordi- 
nances, than to the word of God ; and will not submit herself to the yoke 
of Christ. Neither does she administer the Sacraments as appointed by 
Christ in his word, but adds to, and takes from them, as she thinks pro- 
per. She relieth more upon men than upon Christ ; and persecutes 
those who live according to the word of God, and rebuke her for her 
covetousness and idolatry. Therefore we reject all mixtures and damn- 
able inventions which men have added unto and blended with the sa- 
craments, as profanations of them." Confession of Faith ; Articles 29 
and 35. Hence, it is evident, that the Reformed Dutch Church do ut- 
terly repudiate the Popish ceremonies ; unless they expose themselves 
to the charge of admitting " idolatry and damnable inventions," to be 
Christian ordinances by divine appointment. 

The Roman exorcism, with its accompanying superstitious ritual, is, 
therefore, condemned by all Protestants upon the same general princi- 
ples. They affirm, that the power which invented and enjoined those 
impious observances, is antichristian^that the performers of them are 
not within the church of Christ — that the ceremonies themselves are 
idolatrous and damnable — and that they are altogether contrary to *'lhe 
oracles of God," and the institutions established by divine authority. 

But it may be asked — if all those churches thus deny the Christian 
title of the Roman hierarchy, and the claim to be an evangelical insti- 
tute for the Popish exorcism — how can there be any controversy or 
doubt respecting the genuine character of the Papal priesthood, and of 
their official acts 1 The grand source of all the disputation upon that 
topic, consists in that most absurd and wild delusion, the implied neces- 
sity of the boasted regular succession from the Apostles, through the 
quarrelsome Popes ; two, three, or four of whom existed at the same 
period, each cursing the others with all their adherents, to irrecovera- 
ble misery and despair ; and all of them contriving to fill Europe with 
indescribable atrocities, slaughter, and desolation. 

If the validity of the Roman title to be the true church of Christ at the 
period of the Reformation be admitted, all Protestants are schismatics 
and heretics, who are " in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of ini- 
quity." The controversy is not — whether the Popedom be corrupted'? 
or how far Papists have apostatized 1 or how widely a church may di- 
verge from the Head, without absolute and final rejection '? But thi%is 
the true and essential inquiry — Is the Papacy now, and was it four hun- 
dred, or a thousand years ago, a consiitiient part of the church militant 1 
All sincere and enlightened Protestants peremptorily reply in the nega- 



NOTES. 255 

tive ; and plainly affirm, that the Papal community are not members of 
" the household of faith." 

Christianity and Popery are totally irreconcilable. Christianity 
claims the spiritual worship of God ; Popery is besotted idolatry. Chris- 
tianity asserts the power of godliness ; Popery substitutes its name and 
form. Christianity is a celestial system of intelligence, freedom, phi- 
lanthropy, and holiness ; Popery is " the working of Satan," one invet- 
erate mass of darkness, bondage, malignity, and pollution. Christianity 
demands a life of obedience to the law of God ; Popery tolerates all 
wickedness, provided a sum of money can be paid for the transgression, 
sufficient to satisfy the Confessor Priest's inordinate rapacity. Christian- 
ity refers all the affairs of men to the righteous adjudication of God; 
Popery subjects mankind to the miserable control of an infidel and irre- 
ligious Priest. Popery brutifies its wretched devotees in this life, and 
afterwards incarcerates them in the dungeon of eternal despair. Chris- 
tianity conducts its sincere disciples to the beatific vision of God and 
the Lamb in the New Jerusalem. 

It follows, that Papists are not Members of the church of Christ ; that 
their impious superstitions and idolatrous ceremonies are the practical 
exhibition of " the mystery of iniquity" — and that neither the Romish 
orders nor exorcism is in any way connected with Jesus Christ and his 
evangelical prescriptions. Consequently, it is a dereliction of incum- 
bent duty, and the abetting of high treason against the Lord of all, to ac- 
knowledge the validity of the Papal tonsure and anointing with oil, as 
the evangelical appointment to the ministry of the Gospel ; and of the 
Romish exorcism as Christian baptism. 



^ 



CHAPTER IV. 

LYING WONDERS AND STRONG DELUSION" OF POPERY. 



Paganism amalgamated with Christianity — Masshouses — Altars — Unbloody 
Sacrifice — Images — Festivals— Canonization — Censers — The Jewish Cer- 
emonial and Popish Superstitions contrasted ; Sacrificial Rites / Distinc' 
tion of Meats ; Holiness of places ; Sanctity of Creatures ; External Cer- 
emonies ; and Pompous Worship — Transubstantiation contrary to evan- 
gelical truth ; Self contradictory^ cannot be credited, and unknown to the 
primitive churches — Adoration of the Host — Impossibility of Transubstan- 
tiation — Intellectual and Practical absurdities of Transubstantiation^ 
respecting Place^ Time^ Quantity^ Number^ Distance^ Quality, and Sub- 
stance — Errors concerning the Eucharist in Theory and Ceremonies — Re- 
cent Indention of the Mass. 

The prolific source of all those antichristian heresies which 
the Papists have adopted respecting- their ceremonial worship, 
was this ; their perversely depraved solicitude to incorporate the 
impious superstitions of Paganism with Christianity, as a temp- 
tation for the heathen idolaters to submit themselves to the su- 
premacy of the Roman Pontiff 

Constantino, and the Emperors after him, by their profession 
of the Christian religion, rendered it honorable; and the ancient 
heathen idolatry having been proscribed by imperial edicts, the 
temples of the fictitious gods were closed, sacrifices to the idols 
weie abolished, and the pagan superstitions were authoritatively 
counteracted. Thus many of the opulent Gentiles, for the sake 
of temporal advantage, assumed the name only of Christians, 
and speedily the world occupied and controlled the church. 

The difficulty of eradicating opinions and habits formed from 
infancy also aided the increasing evil ; for multitudes who thus 
became united with the Christian church, adhered to all their 
prior sentiments, and retained their idolatrous and impure ritual. 
Gradually the external pomp and the gorgeous shows of the Sa- 



"LYtNO WONDERS AND STRONG DELUSION" OF POPERY. 257 

turnalia and the Bacchanalia excluded Christian simplicity; 
and by the gradual assimilation of the nominal believers to the 
usages of the various Barbarians, as well as of the anterior 
Greeks and Romans, that compound mixture of unprecedented 
idolatry which characterizes Babylon the Great, was definitively 
established. 

This result was principally effected in the sixth century, by 
Gregory, Prelate of Rome, w^ho, inflamed with the ambitious 
desire to subjugate the British isles under his pontifical sway, 
sent Augustin, a Benedictin Monk, to convert the inhabitants : 
and that he might not be repelled from accomplishing his object, 
Gregory commanded him neither to injure nor to change their 
Pagan temples, altars, and ceremonies ; but as much as possible 
to accommodate himself to their customs. 

Julian the Apostate, during his short reign, in no small degree, 
had restored the ancient Paganism. The heathen temples were 
reopened, the superstitious altars were rebuilt, the idolatrous 
sacrifices were restored, and imperial favor w^as lavished upon 
the Priests of Jupiter, and Bacchus, and Venus ; while at the 
same time, every practicable impediment was placed to the exer- 
cise of the Christian ministry. Some of his imperial successors 
partially connived at that iniquity; and as the magnificence and 
power which their attractive rites combined, aggrandized the 
priestcraft, and could be rendered subservient to their luxury, 
ambition, and avarice; those antichristian observances were 
adopted by the clerical vassals of the Roman hierarch. 

That conformity of the nominal Christians to the ancient idola- 
ters gradually became more exact and general, until it termi- 
nated in the full identity of Popery and Paganism. 

Its primitive development was perceptible in reference to the 
temples erected for the performance of their motley superstitions. 
The followers of the Italian Pontiff constructed buildings to 
emulate the Pagan edifices. — 1. In form — for the Gothic Ca- 
thedrals are similar to the ancient Heathen temples ; each con- 
taining the vestibule, the portico, the hall, and the choirs ; to 
which the Papists superadded diverging wings in the shape ol 
22^ 



;i 



258 *' tYING WONDERS AND 

the cross. 2. In superstition — for they were consecrated after 
the Pagan mode, with aspersions of water. Pilgrimages were 
made to them, and peregrinations around them ; and to complete 
the similitude, as the Gentiles always dedicated their temples to 
some one of their demons, after whose name the house was 
called, Diana, Jove, Mercury, &c. : so the Paganized Christians 
dishonored God, the Rede-emer, and his church ; for they opened 
their mouths, Revelation 13 : 6, "in blasphemy against God, to 
blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them who dwell in 
heaven," — ^by denominating their edifices after the real or super- 
stitious Saint whom they idolized : Mary, Peter, or Paul. Thus 
they illustrated "the doctrine of demons," and precisely fulfilled 
the prediction. Revelation 9 : 20, they *' worshipped devils." 
To which they added names of fictitious persons, who never 
existed, such as Viar, Roch, Ursula, &c. ; thereby to honor and 
commemorate things without meaning, or the grossest legend, 
which superstition and imposture could invent. 

The next step towards the region of darkness, was exhibited 
in the erection of altars, after heathenish practice ; upon which 
they immolated their antichristian offerings. From which 
cause, the semi-heathen Christians began to denominate the table 
of the Lord, the altar. They also changed the titles Eucharist 
and Lord's supper into sacrifice ; and eventually adopted the 
Pagan term, Mass. Polydore Virgil narrates, that the Greeks, 
after the termination of the sacrifices to Isis, were addressed : 
\aoLs a(p£<ni) or as the old Romans : " Ite missio est. Go away, it 
is ended." Whence the Priests under the nominal Christian 
Pontifi; before the celebration of the Eucharist, after they had 
commingled with it a portion of Pagan rites, used to address the 
Catechumens — " Ite, missa est. Go, it is closed." From which it 
is evident, that not only the unmeaning epithet, but also the hlas- 
phemous object itself is Jesuitically purloined from the Gentiles. 

After that delusion, next followed the unbloody sacrifice ; and 
conformably to Pagan custom, the unbroken bread, which the 
Bacchanals offered to their idols ; until at length the various 
theatrical postures and pantomimical acts of the diversified 



OF POPERY. 259 

priests of the Pantheon, were conjoined with the Redeemer's 
sublime, and simple, and spiritual institute. To which, as an 
essential adjunct, was appended the sacerdotal vestments of white 
decorated with gold; without which, according to Pagan super- 
stition, and that startling absurdity and corruption exist among 
avowed Protestants even in the nineteenth century, the impious 
ceremonial could not accurately be performed. 

To gratify the nominal converts from their idolatry, Images 
were admitted into the churches ; which during the first three 
centuries of Christianity, had never been known. In the fourth 
century, the Eliberitan Synod adopted the ensuing canon, to ex- 
clude all representations of every species, from the house of 
prayer—" Placit picturas in Ecclesia esse non debere, ne quod 
colitur aut adoratur in parietibus pingatur. Pictures ought not 
to be exposed in churches, lest that which is painted on the walls 
should be reverenced and adored." But that " worship of devils, 
and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and wood, 
which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk," increased ; until 
salutation, kissing, incense, wax lights, and adoration, exactly 
after the model of the ancient Saturnalia, prevailed throughout 
the ten kingdoms of the mystical Babylon; and continue un- 
changed and unreformed to this day, wherever " the Beast'^ 
rules, and " the false Prophef deceives ! 

The controversy respecting image-worship, which during a 
long period filled the eastern and western empires with confu- 
sion and slaughter, produced another collision concerning tho 
Eucharist : for as spiritual devotion vanished, and the power of 
faith died ; a carnal opinion respecting the Lord's supper ob- 
tained the ascendency ; and in the beginning of the eighth cen- 
tury, the problem was announced — "Whether in the Lord's 
supper the body of Christ was present figuratively, or under 
sacramental signs ; or whether the elements did not contain the 
body itself, ' nude, proprie, vere, et substantialiter ; simply, pro- 
perly, truly, and substantially?' " About the year 822, Pascha- 
sius maintained, that after consecration " the substance of the 
bread and wine is changed into the true body and the true blood 



260 *' LYING WONDERS AND 

of Christ." That contradictory dogma of absolute impossibili- 
ties continued to extend its sway, until in the sixth Roman 
Council held by Pope Gregory VII. in the year 1079; it was 
decreed, that the bread was substantially converted into the bodj'-, 
and the wine into the blood of Christ. In which condition, the 
palpable absurdity remained, as a fundamental article of the 
Popish faith, until Pope Innocent III. in the Lateran Council of 
1215, enacted the undisguised and abhorrent blasphemy of 
Trans nbstantiation. And thus is exemplified that climax of all 
idolatry the worship of the wafer, with the same acts, rites, and 
offerings, as if the gracious Redeemer himself was visibly pre- 
sent in the masshouse. 

The Gentiles commemorated their annual festivals — *' Fehrua, 
sacrifices for the dead ; Binalia, feasts on account of their wine ; 
Rubigalia, and Amharvalia, festivals in reference to their grain ;" 
and the Christian Pagans have substituted for them the feasts of 
Saint Martin, Saint Mark, Saint Michael, and all angels ; All 
Saints, All Souls, and the other lying memorials of Heathen 
idolatry. 

Among the ancient Gentiles, it was customary to institute an 
apotheosis of their heroes, and remarkable women ; by which,' 
when dead, they were numbered among the gods and goddesses 
m their Pantheon. Cicero de Nat. Deor. Lib. 2. Cap. 24. — 
Pliny Nat. Hist. Lib. 2. Cap. 7. In conformity with that wick- 
edness, the heathen Christians, by canonization, as they im- 
piously denominate their wicked ceremonial, transferred their 
saints into inferior deities : to whose presiding patronage they 
commended their affairs, cities, countries, and temples ; and thus 
the worship of angels and saints, which had been denounced by 
Paul, Colossians 2: 18, as practised by the early Platonists ; 
and which again was condemned in the year 360, by the coun- 
cil of Laodicea, Canon 35, as a ''damnable institution i^ was 
generally adopted throughout the dominions of the Beast. Thus 
was gradually introduced the invocation of those beings as In- 
tercessors, and the fanciful and delusive distinctions between 
Xarptia^ the worship of God; HyperdvMa, the adoration of the 



OF POPERY. 261 

Virgin Mary ; and Dulia, the honor and reverence offered to 
angels and saints. 

That conformity to the Pagan superstitious ritual was neces- 
sarily accompanied by the use of the vessels in which to burn 
incense — ^the incessant preservation of lighted lamps and wax 
candles — the ornaments, badges, and shaven crowns of the Eccle- 
siastics — the candles and salt at exorcism ; and all the other mum- 
meries to which spiritual efficacy and grace were attributed ; 
among which are the Agnus Dei, salt water, ringing of bells, re- 
lics, pompous processions, organs, endless tautology in rei^onses 
to the impious prayers, the Rosary, and a multitude of other anti- 
christian blasphemies; the offspring of combined ignorance, 
and diabolism, and priestcraft. 

From this concise survey of the impious ceremonial used by 
the Papists, it is manifest that their pretended worship is altogether 
contrary to the plain prescriptions of the holy scriptures. The 
Jewish economy was totally abrogated by the Lord Jesus Christ ; 
because in him, all the prophecies, promises, types and shadows 
of the Mosaic law were accomplished. They received their 
death-warrant, when the Lord on Calvary pronounced the im- 
mutably emphatical, rsreXsarat ; *' It is finished." Hence, all the 
pretended Romish expiations of sin by the " unbloody sacrifice," 
and works of penance, are diametrically adverse to the gospel 
of Christ, which excludes all satisfaction for sin, except that 
which is made by the blood of the Lamb of God. 

Not only were the sacrificial rites part of the Jewish system; 
but also a distinction of meats was enjoined. That part of the 
ancient system in the Redeemer's kingdom also is entirely re- 
moved ; Matthew 15 : 11 ; by the command of the Head of the 
church to Peter, Acts 10; and by the testimony of Paul, Ro- 
mans 14: 17; " the kingdom of God is not meat and drink ; but 
righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost ;" and Co- 
lossians 2 : 16, 28; and even more, by the express prophetical 
condemnation, of that very part of the Babylonish impiety, 1 
Timothy 4 : 3-5 ; where the apostle distinctly afiirms, that the 
prohibition to abstain from, meats which God hath created, is 



262 " LYING WONDERS AND 

part of " the doctrine of devils," promulged by *' seducing spi- ^ 
rits, who speak lies in hypocrisy." 

The ancient temple at Jerusalem was a symbol of the divine 
presence, and therefore it was esteemed as Sanctum Sanctorum, 
the Holy of Holies. That peculiarity, with the requirements 
of special worship there, is announced by the Son of God himself 
to have ceased for ever, John 4 : 21, 23 ; thereby assuring us, that 
God thenceforth should not be worshipped in any peculiar place 
as containing symbolically his presence ; but that Jehovah every 
where -should be reverenced and spiritually adored. In direct 
contradiction to that appointment of Messias, the Papists ascribe 
sanctity to particular edifices and locations; and which is yet 
more remarkable both for its stupidity and irreligion, not upon 
the pretext that God is symbolically present, but because the 
supposititious image or relics of some fabulous idol are there 
deposited. Hence, special pilgrimages are made to those temples, 
altars, sepulchres, or cenotaphs ; while liturgies of prayers and 
litanies of praise, peculiarly appropriated for the worship of the 
imaginary demon, and the appendages of that priestly impos- 
ture, are offered on account of the alleged holiness of the place, 
and the fancied presence of the being who is thus idolized. That 
dll the diversified superstition which that blasphemous infatua- 
tion comprises, is antichristian ; is self-evident. 

The oracles of God deny the principle that any heavenly, 
spiritual or saving efficacy can be derived from the touch of ma- 
terial or inanimate creatures, so that by contact, any magical or 
supernatural benefit can be obtained from them ; and they also 
teach us, that for all sanctity and grace and spiritual life, we are 
indebted to the compassion of Christ alone, by the vivifying and 
cleansing operation of the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, Pa- 
pists ascribe divine energy to the relics of saints ; the Agnus 
Dei, crosses, images, wax lights, ashes, oil, bells, and salt water ; 
to which they also attribute the power to effect health of body, 
the ejection of evil spirits, the healing of diseases, the expiation 
of sin, human sanctification, and the salvation of the soul. 

In the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, 



OF POPERY. 263 

all righteousness from external works and ceremonial duties is 
pronounced to be nugatory; Matthew 5: 20; Galatians 5 : 4, 5, 6. 
The Papists, both in theory and practice, deny that fundamental 
proposition of the gospel ; for they proclaim, that abstinence from 
meats; pilgrimages; bodily lacerations; endless chattering of 
words in an unknown tongue; donations to the Roman Priests, 
for soul-masses and absolutions; the monastic life; and vows of 
chastity, of poverty, and of blind obedience to the Papal priest- 
hood, secure absolute and perfect justification " before the judg- 
ment seat of Christ." 

The evangelical rule for divine adoration is comprised in the 
Lord's words ; John 4 : 24. '* God is a spirit ; and they who 
worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth." To 
which the multitudinous ceremonies, and bodily exercises, and 
impious superstitions of the Papacy are altogether opposed. 
By their sensible exhibitions, and scenir^al representations, and 
pompous mummery, they draw away the mind from every thing 
spiritual; and by circumscribing all their rights to certain 
places, which are reputed to be more holy than others ; they 
sanction the antichristian delusion, that there alone, will worship 
be profitable, and that only before their idols are religious rever- 
ence and fear, and devotional emotions, and a solemn feeling, a/ 
all desirable or necessary. 

From these contrasts, it is irrefragable ; that the ceremonial 
pageantry of the Mass house, with all its papistical adjuncts, is 
as far disjoined from the spiritual worship of Jehovah, as the 
calves in Dan and Bethel set up by Jeroboam, " who changed 
the truth of God into a lie," were severed from "the glory of 
the incorruptible God," as developed in the temple of Solomon. — 
Sherlock's Preservative against Popery, Chapter 3. 

Transubstantiation. As the whole impious system of 
the Romish superstitious ceremonial is derived from the dogma 
of Transubstantiation ; it is essential to explain and confute that 
astounding and abhorrent blasphemy ; and for this object, three 
different illustrations of that fundamental topic are introduced. 

The dogma of Transubstantiation is contrary to evangelical 



264 *' LYING WONDERS AND 

truth. In the New Testament, the Lord's Supper is describe^ 
as a sign and seal of the body and blood of Jesus Christ cruci- 
fied and effused for the remission of our sins. Luke 22 : 19. 
1 Corinthians 10: 16. 1 Corinthians 11 : 25. There the Eucha- 
rist is represented both as a Commemoration, which is the Sign^ 
and as a Communion, which is the Seal ; for the communion is 
not bodily which profiteth nothing, but life-giving and full of 
salvation. John 6 : 63. As it is self-evident, that a sign and seal 
cannot be the thing signified and attested, therefore the words, 
^'tovtq £(TTi Tocufxa [xov, Hoc est corpus meum, This is my body" — 
cannot indicate a substantial change of the object, but is the 
signification and testimony of the body. 

The Papists however assert; Concil. Trident. Sess. 13. Ca- 
nons 2, 4 ; that the bread and wine in the Eucharist, after the 
secret muttering by the Priest, of the words ; " Hoc est corpus 
meum," are the true body and blood of Christ; and that the sa- 
cred symbols are no longer signs and seals ; but are the thing 
signified and sealed ; so that the sacrament is nullified — conse- 
quently the doctrine of Trans ubstantiation is contrary to the 
Gospel. 

The doctrine of Transubstantiatio7i is self- contradictory. 
The body of Christ, according to the Scriptures, was in all 
points a human body, except that it was sinless : which there- 
fore must be visible ; but in the Romish mass, that body is 
invisible. It is, at the same time, in innumerable places ; dis- 
tant from itself, departs from itself, and approaches itself It is 
greater and less than itself It is less than a part, and yet con- 
tains the whole in it. It is a human body, which ate itself, and 
may be eaten. It distributes itself whole to others. It contains 
properties in one place contrary to those which it has in 
another. Here it is visible and touched ; there it is unseen and 
impalpable. Here it is local, extended, impenetrable, divisible; 
there it is without place, void of size, penetrable, undivided. Jt 
arose from the sepulchre, and never left it. It ascended to hea- 
ven, and remains upon earth. It returned to earth from heaven, 
and yet never left the earth. It is a body without accidents, 



OF POPERY. 265 

which is concealed under accidents without a substance. It is a 
body w^hich existed before it was produced ; and yet which pro- 
duced itself by the pronunciation of certain words. All those 
self-contradictory positions are attributed to the same subject ; 
each of which impugns and destroys the other ; whence Transub- 
stantiation is a blasphemous " strong delusion and lying wonder." 
If Transubstantiation is believed, Transubstantiatio7i cannot 
he credited. Papists aver, that Transubstantiation constitutes 
the chief m3;^stery of the Christian religion ; therefore the truth 
of Christianity must be first admitted ; w^hich rests upon the 
apostolic testimony, concerning the miracles and resurrection of 
Jesus ; but all the confidence of those witnesses depends upon 
the evidence of their senses; for the most splendid miracle 
which could be wrought would be useless, if it could not be sen- 
sibly perceived. If, therefore, confidence in the senses is denied, 
the apostles, who only could judge of the Lord's resurrection by 
their senses, are not certain witnesses ; and consequently there 
is no certain foundation for faith in the glorious gospel. Hence, 
if that faith is dubious or hesitating, sure confidence in the Chris- 
tian religion is extirpated ; for if the foundation be destroyed, the 
house will be overthrow^n. But the dogma of Transubstantia- 
tion renders the New Testament uncertain; for it denies all 
reliance upon the senses ; and thus invalidates the evidence of 
the apostles to the resurrection of the Saviour. He therefore, 
who believes Transubstantiation, contradicts the certainty of 
Christianity; but he w^ho destroys the truth of the apostolic 
testimony to the Gospel, also denies the truth of Transubstan- 
tiation, w^hich he says is revealed by it. Consequently, if Tran- 
substantiation is believed, Transubstantiation cannot be credited ; 
because the most astonishing miracle could not give credibility 
to Transubstantiation, unless it was attested by the evidence of 
the senses ; but if confidence is given to the senses, Transub- 
stantiation at once is obliterated. Turretin De Variis Theolog. 
Capitibus: 116, 117. 

The dogma of Transubstantiation icas unknoicn in the primi- 
tive ages of the church. After his benediction, Christ called 
23 



266 " LYING WONDERS AND 

that \yhich he gave his apostles to drink, wine ; Matthew 26 : 
29. Mark 14: 25. Paul expressly denominated the elements 
after consecration, the same as prior to the blessing ; 1 Corin- 
thians 10: 16; and 11 : 26 — 28. No mention is made of the 
** adoration of the Host," by the Evangelists or the Apostles; 
and nothing can be added to the sacred word with impunity. 
Deuteronomy 4: 2. Revelation 22: 18, 19. Transubstan- 
tiation was not known to Ireneus, who writes ; " l^^vxaoiaTia « 6vo 

Tpayfiarcxiv (jvvsarfiKVia, emyeiov rz Kai ovpaviov\ the eucharist is COmpOSed 

of two parts, the earthly and the heavenly." Lib. 4, cap. 39, 
page 327. To that position Augnstin ' ^sents, when he says ; — 
" Visibili elementorum specie, invisibili Domuni nostri Jesu 
Christi carne et sanguine sacramento et re sacramenti; &c. 
The Eucharist consists in the visible species of elements, in the 
invisible flesh and blood of Christ, in the sacrament and the 
matter of the sacrament." Prosper Decret. Par. 3. De Conse- 
crat. Dist. 2. cap. 48. Chrysostom, in his epistle to Caesar. 
Monach. where he opposes the Apollinarian heresy, thus de- 
cides — " Antequam sanctificetur panis, panem nominamus ; divina 
autem ilium sanctificante gratia, liberatus est adpellatione panis ; 
etiamsi natura panis in ipso permansit. — Before the bread is con- 
secrated, we call it bread ; but, by divine grace sanctify^jig it, it 
is no longer called bread ; although the nature of bread remains 
in it." Theodoret Dialog. 2, vol. 4, thus avows — *' Nee sym- 
hola mystica post sanctificationem recedunt a sua natura. Manent 
enim in priore substantia, et figura, et forma., et videri tangique 
possunt; sicut et prius. — The mystical symbols, after conse- 
cration, recede not from their nature : for they remain in their 
prior substance, and figure, and form; and may be seen and 
touched as before." Gelasius the Roman Pontiff, in his book, 
De duab. nat. in Christo advers. Eutych. et Nestor., which is 
preserved in Bibliothec. Maxim. Vet. Patrum, vol. 8, declares — 
" Certe, sacramenta quae sumimus, corporis et sanguinis Domini, 
divina res est; tamen esse non desinit substantia, vel natura 
panis et vini. — Verily the sacrament of the body and blood of the 



267 

Lord, which we receive, is a divine thing ; yet the substance, or 
nature of bread and wine, does not cease to be." 

The primitive Christian writers were equally ignorant of the 
adoration of the Host as of Transubstantiation. DallsBus, in his 
work Advers. Cult. Latinorum demonstrates, that the worship 
of the wafer is never even implied. The Council of Nice, in 
the year 325, also inculcate the same ; for by their admonition 
they insinuate that believers in general then had too earthly 
views of the symbolical purport of that evangelical institute — 
*' Ne in propositum panem et calicem humiliter intenti simus, 
sed elevata fide, mente contemplemur in ilia celesti mensa ini- 
maculatum agnum Jesum. — Let us not be too humbly intent 
upon the bread and cup, but with elevated faith, let us contem- 
plate upon that heavenly table, the immaculate Lamb, Jesus." 
In fact, before the ninth century, no trace of those cardinal dog- 
mas and " damnable heresies" of Popery can be found. Walch. 
Hist. Transubstant. Pontificise. 

Bellarmin, in his disquisition De Eucharistia, Lib. 1. Cap. L, 
thus declares — " Neque ullus veterum disputat contra hunc 
errorem primis sexcentis annis.-^No one of the ancients opposed 
Transubstantiation during the first 600 years." That fact is 
true; and for a plain reason: — Transubstantiation not having 
been invented, was totally unknown ; and consequently that im- 
pious fallacy could not be controverted. 

The adoration of the Host is manifest idolatry ; if by idola- 
try be understood, divine honors appropriated to a creature, or to 
God under the form of a creature. Papists say, that after the 
consecration by the Priest, the crumb of bread, being changed 
into "the body of the Lord," ought to receive the same adora- 
tion which is offered to the most high God ; — ^but that the wafer 
is merely a creature, already has clearly been demonstrated ; 
and consequently the adoration of the Host is idolatry. 

But even admitting, for the sake of additional illustration, that 
the Papistical dogma is certain ; Romanists never can be assured 
that the true body of the Lord is present. According to their 
decision, canonical administration is essential to the transubstan- 



268 "LYING WONDERS AND 

tiation of the external sjnubols into the body and blood of Christ : 
for which object, the legitimate ordering of the priest, and his 
full intention in the consecration of it, are essential. But who 
can know that the priest was regularly ordered, with the inten- 
tion of the prelate? or whether the priest intended that the 
wafer should be consecrated? As therefore, no Papist can pos- 
sibly know whether he worships the Lord or bread, by his own 
doctrine, he is an idolater. 

Jehovah most clearly prohibits all honor to be given to him 
under any external form or image; Deuteronomy 4: 15, 16. 
John 4 : 24. But Papists pretend to worship God under the 
visible and external appearance of creatures; which impious 
service is totally prohibited, and therefore by worshipping the 
host they are Idolaters. Stapfer Instit. Theolog. Polem. Cap. 
14. De Papismo. Sect. 397-433. 

Absolute impossibility of Traiisubstantiation. There are 
two classes of absurdities comprised in that fundamental dogma 
of Popery ; and if they are eradicated, the whole Babylonish 
temple is crum.bled into dust. It will immediately be allowed 
by all rational persons, that a doctrine which contains impossi- 
bilities is an impossible doctrine — that omnipotence itself, with 
profound reverence is the remark made, cannot create an impos- 
sibility — and that to reconcile a flat contradiction is utterly im- 
practicable. From which axioms, it is justly inferred, that 
Transubstantiation is impossible. 

Intellectual absurdities. Transubstantiation involves contra- 
dictions respecting Place ; for it avers, that the self-same body 
is in heaven, upon earth, and upon innumerable widely distant 
altars, at once ; which is manifestly absurd. Papists represent 
the doctrine of Transubstantiation as implying " a supernatural 
manner of existence, whereby that body is rendered independent 
of place, and may be one and the same in many different places 
at the same moment." In reply to this "strong delusion," it 
may be rem.arked ; that every body, even though it exists in a 
supernatural manner, must either be every where, which com- 
prises the divine aitribute of immensity or infinitude, and so be- 



STRONG delusion" OF POPERY. 269 

ing in all places, would not require Roman Priests to " create'* 
it — or it is in no place, for that body which is independent of 
place is non-existent ; and thus the Popish dogma is only a 
"lying wonder;" — or it must be somewhere. So Papists say, 
that it is in many places at once ; which is only affirming in 
other words ; that a body is in a given place, and yet it is in 
another place at the same time ; so that it may be north, south, 
east or west of itself, or above or below itself, or circumscribed 
or unconfined, at the same period. 

Transubstantiation unfolds contradictions in reference to Time, 
Every thing now in existence either always existed, which eter- 
nity is applicable only to God; or it had a beginning, and there- 
fore is finite. The human body which was born of the Virgin 
Mary 1836 years ago, has continued to exist from that period; but 
the bodies which the Roman " Priests have made" this day, are 
not many hours old. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, 
Sect. 82. De Eucharist, says, " Conficiunt Christi Corpus et 
Sanguinis — The Priests make the body and blood of Christ." 
Now the duration of 1836 years cannot be the term of a few 
hours ; but if the Papist wafer consecrated this day be the same 
body which suffered on Calvary, then it lived 1836 years before 
it began to be ; and consequently, during every moment of that 
period the same body was in being, and yet did not exist ; which 
astounding display of Popery combines about one hundred and 
sixteen thousand millions of contradictions. 

It is also self-evident ; that the cause must exist before the ef- 
fect ; otherwise the effect would not only be prior to itself, but 
also would exist even before its cause. Apply this axiom to 
Transubstantiation. The causes of the Mass wafer are the 
flour and other materials of which it is composed ; for the Ro- 
man Priests themselves acknowledge, that in the same manner, 
or for the same purpose, they cannot change fish, flesh, fowl, 
wood, or stones ; and the baker by whom the wafer is made ; and 
the priest who pretends to create the body ; and the words " pro- 
nounced at one breath, Hoc est corpus meum ;" and the con- 
sideration which moved him to sing the Mass at that particular 



270 "LYING WONDERS AND 

time. But neither the bread, nor the baker, nor the priest, nor 
the price of the soul-mass, were in being- possibly twenty-five 
years ago — ^but the body of Christ existed more than eighteen 
hundred years ago ; whence we are absolutely certain that the Ro- 
man priests cannot make the Lord's body. It is also marvellous, 
that those "Jesuit Jugglers,^' as Richard Baxter aptly denomi- 
nated them, to complete their absurdity, do not contend that the 
Lord's body which they create is equally independent of time as 
of place. 

Transubstantiation announces contradictions as it regards 
Quantity ; for according to the Popish blasphemy, the body at 
the same time is both larger and less than itself To avoid which 
marvellous absurdity, the Jesuits invented this definition — the 
body of Christ in the Eucharist " is endued with a supernatural 
manner of existence, by which being left without extension of 
parts, it is whole in every part of the symbols, and not ob- 
noxious to any corporeal contingencies." Examine this propo- 
sition. It is '^ a body to ithout extension of parts, ''^ According 
to which idea, if it can be made to mean any thing, a part 
is as large as the whole ; for as neither any part however 
small, nor the whole which is composed of all the parts, has 
any extension, they must be equal ; and a body without exten- 
sion is a nonentity, and a plain contradiction in words. — They 
also affirm, that " the whole body is in every part of the symbols;''^ 
but the elements have a countless number of distinct parts, and 
consequently, according to the Papist dogma, that one body 
being whole in every distinct part, must contain as many bodies 
as there are parts ; in other words, one body is a countless mul- 
titude of bodies at the same moment of time. They likewise 
declare, that " the body is 7iot obnoxious to any corporeal con- 
tingencies ;" but it requires no proof, that a thing which pos- 
sesses none of the essential qualities, and which can realize 
none of the ordinary influence exerted upon corporeal subjects, 
is not a body ; and therefore the Popish dogma unfolds an abso- 
lute impossibility. 

Transubstantiation implies contradictions when we advert to 



OF POPERY. 271 

Number, The Papists affirm, that numberless distinct and distant 
bodies, which were eaten hundreds of years ago, are the very- 
same body which hung on the cross, and also that they all are 
the same wafer which he holds in his hand. That property in a 
body which we call unity consists in this principle ; " that it he 
undivided from itself and separate from all othersP Apply this 
criterion. There is a Mass-wafer in the Pix at Buenos Ayres, 
and another in the Pix at Quebec ; whence it follows, that if 
those wafers are the same, according to the Popish faith, then 
it is undivided from itself, although it is six thousand miles dis- 
tant from itself: which is impossible. Besides, a real distinction 
between substances is infallibly proved by the fact, that "-one 
can he without the other, and that they can exist apart ;" but 
Christ's body so called at Buenos Ayres, and that at Gluebec, are 
severed by nearly one half of the distance from the north and 
south pole, and therefore it is impossible that they can be the 
same body, as the Papists affirm. — School of the Eucharist, 
page 2, 4, 7. 

Transubstantiation affirms contradictions respecting Distance ; 
for if " God's body," as the Papists impiously affirm, is the 
same, and at the same time, in each of the Masshouses at Que- 
bec, Boston, New York, Baltimore, Charleston, New" Orleans, 
Mexico, Rio Janeiro, and Buenos Ayres ; it follows, that all 
those places are not only equi-distant from each other, but that 
there is no distance at all between them ; and when multiplied 
by all the masshouses in the world of every age during the last 
thousand years, the number and variety of impossibilities which 
that blasphemous absurdity involves, transcend all arithmetical 
computation. 

Transubstantiation comprises contradictions in reference to 
Quality. According to Romanism, the self-same body of Christ 
possesses totally opposite attributes, and at every moment is both 
like and unlike to itself In heaven it appears as a human 
body ; upon earth in the form of a wafer. It is marked with a 
crucifix, and at the same time with I. H. S. Those, and my- 
riads of other contradictions in the superstitious Romish ceiG- 



272 "LYING WONDERS AND 

monial, all are affirmed and denied at the same time of the iden- 
tical object. To evade the reproach of thus falsifying undeniable 
truth ; the Papists aver, that " a body in two places is equivalent 
to two bodies, and therefore one may say of it the most opposite 
things without contradiction.''^ — Six Conferences concerning ths 
Eucharist, page 89. But that one body can be in two places at 
once is an utter impossibilit}^ That position makes one body two ; 
but if a Jesuit Priest can make one wafer two, he is equally 
competent to make it two millions ; Avhich involves an equal 
number of double contradictory impossibilities. To augment the 
absurdity ; not only do they make one body two, but they station 
that identical body at the same moment, during one thousand 
eight hundred years, in five thousand divers places ; so that one 
body is in the same form of flesh, and new bread and old wafers, 
and sweet and sour wine, and wine and water : at Rome, Madrid, 
Goa, and Mexico, and in every place, and at all times ; where a 
criimb of bread and a massing Priest have been found upon the 
face of our globe ; all which involves such numberless contradic- 
tions, that arithmetic would fail to compute them. Besides, the 
impossible supposition of one bod}^ being in several places at the 
same period, directly denies all difference and dissimilitude in 
that body. 

Nothing can be present and absent from the same subject at 
the same time : but as some of the mass-wafers are marked with 
I. H. S., and others with a crucifix, if they are identical, it fol- 
lows that they are marked and not marked ; or that an essential 
attribute of the substance is present and absent at the same 
moment. 

" God's body," to use the Popish blasphemous phraseology, 
in the form of bread, is not the same as that which is in the form 
of wine; for if it be, then bread is wine, and wine is bread; or, 
in other words, bread is not bread, which is impossible ; and the 
papistical dogma is impiously absurd. 

Transubstantiation promulges contradictions concerning the 
Substance of the mass-wafer. In the catechism of the Council 
of Trent, De Eucharist. Sect. 25, 44, is this contradictory state- 



OF POPERY. 273 

ment. " When the substances of bread and wine are abolished, 
and wholly cease to be, still all the accidents of bread and wine 
are seen to remain without any subject at all. For the sub- 
stances of bread and Avine are departed and gone, and those 
accidents cannot cleave and be united to the body and blood of 
Christ, and therefore it remains, that in a supernatural way, 
they must subsist of themselves." In reply to this astounding 
absurdity, it may be remarked, that the essence of an accident is 
to subsist in a subject ; and the essence of a substance is to sub- 
sist by itself; so that if an accident could subsist without a sub- 
ject, it would possess two contrary natures ; or the same thing 
would be w^hat it is, and not be w^hat it is ; that is, it would sub- 
sist, and it would not subsist, in a subject at the same period ; 
which is impossible. Hence w^e may apply the acknowledg- 
ment of Coster the Jesuit, who admits — " If the bread he not 
changed into the body of Christ, the worship of the Host is gross 
idolatry ;'^^ but it has been demonstrated that there can be no 
such change, and therefore the Papists are gross idolaters. 

Practical Absurdities. Papists worship a morsel of bread as 
if it were their God. — Intolerable reproach and dishonour accrue 
to the Redeemer from the worship of the Host. — Roman priests 
imprint upon their idol, I. H. S., to impress the imaginations of 
their devotees with the belief, that the mass-wafer verily is the 
Savior of the w^orld. — Johnson's Absolute Impossibility of 
Transubstantiation demonstrated. 

Errors concerning the Eucharist. Deyliiiger, Exer* 
citatio 3, 4, and 5, has amassed a rich exuberance of illustrations 
and testimonies, respecting the diversified topics connected w^ith 
the idolatry of the mass. Many of the ensuing facts and obser- 
vations are extracted from his most important work, entitled, 
Observat. Sac. et Miscellan. 

Bossuet, in his renowned volume, entitled, " The Variations 
of Protestants," avows — " If, by any props, authentic decisions, 
and permianent circumstances, the Protestants can evince that 
there is the least inconsistency, or the smallest variation in the 
Romish doctrines, from their origin until this period, or from tho 



274 "LYING WONDERS AND 

foundation of Christianity, I wiM admit that they are right, and 
will obliterate my history." Preface, Sect.. 29. In his "Expo- 
sition of Christian Doctrine," article 19, he also remarks — 
" The Homan church has declared, by all her councils, and in 
all her professions of faith that they have published, that they 
receive no dogma which is not conformed to the tradition of all 
preceding ages." 

Hyacinth, in his Ecclesiastical History, Colloq. 7, inculcates 
the same principle ; for he contends that " the doctrine of the 
church is not subject to the least mutation, but that it hath been 
carefully preserved, in every age, by an inviolable series, alto- 
gether perfect and uncorrupted, from the times of Christ and his 
apostles unto us ; because it is equally as impossible, that the 
true church should fail, as that they should fall in the smallest 
tittle from any doctrine received from Christ the Lord: for the 
doctrine of the church can neither be changed nor interpolated^ 
either by vicissitudes of times or distance of places, but always 
continues invariable." 

Notwithstanding those positive assertions, it is irrefragable, 
that "the Romanists have changed and totally corrupted the 
primitive doctrines." This fact is especially illustrated in the 
Redeemer's commemorative ordinance ; and therefore by the 
Romish admission, the Papacy is neither infallible, nor any part 
of the universal Christian church. - > 

The administration of the Lord's Supper, " in the beginning,"" 
was most simple, and without those various superstitions and 
idolatrous ceremonies which now appertain to it. — Justin Martyr 
Apolog. 1. Sec. 87. With whom agree Ambrose, Chrysostom, 
Augustin, Strabo, Berno, and Bibliothec. Pat. Magn. Cap. 22. 

The V ernacular language was always, and every where, used 
in public worship, until the sixth century; as is proved by 
Usher, Hist. Dogmat. Script, et Sac. Vernaculis. Cap. 2 and 3. 

Communion in one kind was utterly unknowm to the church 
until the twelfth century. Cyril, in his Catech. Myst. V., Cap. 
Ult., thus records: "Post communionem corporis Christi 
irpo^p^ov Kat T(o Tcorvpica rov aiiiaros. After the communion of the 



OF POPERY. 275 

body of Christ, come also the cup of the blood." There is a 
very remarkable circumstance, in this respect, mentioned by 
Cogitosus, in the life of the famous nun and abbess, Saint 
Bridget; Thesaur. Monument. Eccles. Cavisiani, page 423. 
*' Ostium fuisse in sinistra parta parietis ecclesias, per quod Ab- 
batissa cum suis puellis intrabat, ut convivio corporis et sangui- 
nis Jesu Christi fruerentur. There was a gate in the left part of 
the wall of the church, through which the Abbess and her girls 
entered, that they might partake of the feast of the body and blood 
of Jesus Christ." The testimony of all Papist annalists, and even 
the Jesuit controvertists, without reserve, admit that fact. 

Solitary masses, by the priest alone, were totally unknowni 
during several centuries of the church. Cyprian Orat. Dominic, 
page 140. — Chrysostom, 1 Corinthians 10: 17. — Ambrose 
Sacrament. Lib. 4, 5. — Augustin Epist. 118. — Canon 9, Apos- 
tol. — Canon 2, Concil. Antioch. 

The elements formerly were consecrated by prayer only, for 
the blessing and presence of the Holy Spirit. Origen Com- 
ment. Matth. Pag. 242, 254 ; and Book 8, Adv. Celsum. In 
the Apostolic Constitutions, Book 8, chap. 12, the administrator 
of the Eucharist is represented as praying to Jehovah thus — 
*' We implore thee to look down kindly upon this offering before 
thee, and send thy Holy Spirit, the witness of our Lord's pas- 
sion, that he may exhibit to us this bread as Christ's body, and 
this cup as Christ's blood." All the ancient Missals, Latin, 
Franc, Gothic, Gallican, Spanish, and the Ambrosian, attest the 
same truth. Mabillon Liturg. Gallic. Cap. 5. — Martini Antiq. 
Eccles. Ritib. Part 1. Lib. 1. Cap. 4. Art. 7. Sect. 6.— Pfaffius 
Dissert, de Consecrat. Vet. Eucharist. Sect. 6. 

The ancient churches knew nothing of the immolation of 
Christ in the mass. Their celebration consisted only of bread 
and wine, as a spiritual and figurative remembrance. Without 
multiplying references, t\vo quotations will be amply sufficient 
to demonstrate, that the primitive Christians and the Papists are 
utterly at discord upon doctrines and rites ^vhich entirely destroy 
the sacrifice of the Lamb of God ; and perpetuate a system of 



276 "LYING WONDERS AND 

the most heinous and impious idolatry. Augustin in his Divers. 
Question. Gluest. 62, thus decides — " Christus sacerdos noster 
seipsum obtulit holocaustum pro peccatis nostris, et ejus sacri 
iicii similitudinem celebrandam in su^ passionis memoriam 
commendavit; ut illud, Deo per toturn orbem terrarum in 
Christi ecclesia, videamus offerri. — Christ, our priest, offered 
himself a sacrifice for our sins, and commanded that the simiti- 
tude of his oblation should be celebrated in remembrance of his 
suffering, as we now see it offered to God in the Christian 
churches throughout the world." In the most positive contra- 
diction to Augustin, the Council of Trent, Session 22, Canon 2, 
thus decreed — " If any one shall sa,y, that in those Avords, ' Do 
this in remembrance of me,' Christ did not institute or ordain his 
apostles as priests, so that they and other priests should offer his 
body and blood, let him be anathema." All the most ancient 
writers, and even the early Missals, assent to the doctrine which 
is promulgated by Augustin. The irrational doctrine of the 
Romish mass is, therefore, a most pernicious and detestable 
novelty. 

The name and the dogm^a of Transubstantiation were unknowixj 
until the ninth century; and were not made an article of faith,, 
and pronounced to be infallible, until the Lateran Council held- 
by Pope Innocent III. in 1215. From which dogma, Gabriel,- 
Biel and others have blasphemously attempted to prove the 
pre-eminence of the Romish Priests — '* quoniam ipsum Creato ■ 
rem quotidie crearent; because they may daily create their,. 
Creator." 

The word Mass, according to its true origin and the ancient 
use and meaning of the primitive churches, never denoted an 
expiatory sacrifice offered for the living and the dead. ConciL 
Trident. Sess. 22. Can. 3. Missa, was originally used as a 
command to the catechumens and others, to depart from the 
assembly prior to the administration of the Lord's supper, which 
was celebrated only when the communicants were present ; and 
subsequently was addressed also at the close of the communion 
service. The term Mass first appears as a title of the Eucha- 



OF POPERY. 277 

fist, in the twentieth Epistle of Ambrose to Marcellina, Vol. 2, 
853, where it is recorded — " Missam facere coepi, — I began to 
perform the Mass;" in which place, as is evident from the con- 
text, the prayers usually offered at that commemorative ordi- 
nance are meant ; and thenceforth the word was often applied, 
concisely to express the participation and communion of the 
sacred feast. Beyond all dispute, the ancient phrase ; *' Missam 
audire ; to attend the Mass," was a totally different thing from 
the modern Romish interpretation ; for in the primitive churches 
daring several centuries, the celebration of the Eucharist was 
neither a theatrical spectacle, nor an expiatory sacrifice offered 
to God for the living and the dead. 

It is also a novel and shameful error, when Papists expound 
the words, '''' \eiTovpyiav and Izirovpytiv^ ministry and to minister," 
Acts 13: 2, as expressive of mass-sacrificing priests ; and also 
in other passages of Scripture, where " Aeiroujoyta, ministry," is 
mentioned, as comprehending the Popish sacrifice of the Mass. 

Theodoret applies the term Xeirovpyia, to the singing of hymns 
in praise of God. Vol. 3. Cap. 26. AntiocJms Flomil. 19. 
Bibliothec. Pat. Vol. 12: 44, uses it for morning and evening 
prayer. Justinian Novella 7. Cap. 11, introduces ^^^eirovpyiav" 
to express the recitation of the Scriptures, and the celebration of 
the Lord's supper. The apostle Paul, Romans 15 : 15, 16, ex- 
pressly designates by it, the ministry of Jesus Christ to which 
he was called. Chrysostom, in his exposition of Acts 13: 2, 
uses the v/ord for preaching. Even the Vulgate interprets that 
phrase in the same sense as our translation, " Ministrantibus 
illis, they ministering." The Syriac and Arabic versions trans- 
late the ward, "- fraying^ It is certain that it is a generic 
term; and the application of it to the celebration of the Mass is 
only a recent contrivance to sustain the Romish idolatry. 

The private and solitary masses, which now are so frequently 
used in the Papacy, are novel corruptions ; introduced through 
the depravation of posterior times, and totally unknown to the 
primitive churches. What is a private or solitary mass ? Ic 
is a mass " in which the priest alone sacramentally communi- 
24 



278 " LYING WONDERS AND 

cates" — Concil. Trident. Sess. 22. Can. 8. That Papist dogma- 
is totally repugnant to the Christian ordinance ; which contains 
an injunction upon all Christians to eat the bread and drink of 
the cixi^m communion. — 1 Cor. 10: 17; and 11: 24 — 26. The 
Greek Fathers generally denominated the Eucharist, " awa^tu, 
the assembly," expressive of the meeting of friends at a festival.. 
Casaubon Exercitat. 16. Num. 42. Which interpretation is 
sanctioned both by Athenseus and Hesychius. 

Bona, a Cardinal of the Popedom, in his Rerum Liturg. Lib. 
1. Cap. 13. Sect. 11. thus writes — "At the beginning, the insti- 
tution was solemnized in public, in presence of the ministers and 
people, all communicating ; as the nature of the Mass and the 
practice of the ancient churches evince : for all the prayers and . 
service are in the plural number, because they are offered in the 
name of the multitude." The fact thus stated by the Popish 
Cardinal, is proved by the testimony of Justin Martyr, who in 

his Apolog. 1. Sect. 87. affirms : 'S SiaSoais xai ri [ieTa\riipis UTTO Tb)p 

£vx°^9^'^'^^^^vT^v sKaaro} yivsrai ; the distribution and communion of 
the consecrated elements are made to every one present." That 
evidence is corroborated by the tenth " Canon of the Apostles ;" 
and also by the Council of Antioch, Can. 2., which declares the 
practice of the primitive churches in a very edifying injunction, 
that even in modern times might profitably be enforced. ** Si 
quis intrat ecclesiam Dei, et avertit se a communione sacramenti, 
et in observandis mysteriis declinat constitutam regulam disci- 
plinsB; ilium talem projiciendum de Ecclesia Catholica esse 
decernimus. — If any person shall enter the church of God, and 
turn away from the communion of the sacrament; and in ob- 
serving the mysteries, shall violate the appointed lule of disci- 
pline; we decree, that he shall be ejected from the Catholic 
church." Until that period, the Lord's death was commemo- 
rated by many, whenever they met for divine worship; but 
universally was the Eucharist celebrated on the Lord's day; 
and it is beyond all doubt, that inconceivable evils have followed 
from the abrogation of that apostolic practice ; and that unspeak- 



STRONG delusion" OF POPERY. 279 

able blessings to the church would attend the restoration of that 
ancient weekly observance of duty, faith, hope, and love. 

Numberless witnesses could be adduced, not only from the 
writers prior to the establishment of the Papacy under Boniface 
in 606, but also from the Romish authors subsequent to that 
period, to demonstrate both the novelty and the curse of private 
masses. The following are peculiarly worthy to be referred to 
by the student: Micrologus Eccles. Observ. Cap. 51. — Odo 
Comment. Can. Missse. — Stephanus Sacram. Altar. Cap. 13. 
Bibliothec. Pat. Vol. 6; and 10. 

The Councils of Nantz, Mentz, and Paris, w^ith many others, 
all pronounced, that "solitary masses are a dangerous super- 
stition, invented by monks, which ought to be exterminated.'' 
Chemnitius Exam. Concil, Trident. 

The sacrifice of the Mass, including a propitiatory satisfac- 
tion for guilt and punishment, as the Papists declare, was equally 
unknown to the ancient churches. Ireneus, Origen, Cyril, 
Chrysostom, and many others, all directly impugn the third 
canon of the Council of Trent, Session 22 ; which says — " If 
any person shall assert, that the sacrifice of the Mass is not pro- 
pitiatory, let him be anathema.'* 

Chrysostom expressly calls the Eucharist the " remembrance 
of the death of Christ ;" Homil. 17. Epist. ad Hebr. Theodoret, 
ad Heb. 8 : 4, 5, also affirms that the celebration of the Lord's 
supper is, " Tr]v nvrinriv sTTireXoviJiev, to bear in memory, or to preserve 
the memorial" of the Savior's death. Augustin Con. Faust. 
Manich. Lib, 20. Cap. 21., defines the " communion," as " Sa- 
cr amentum Memories, a sacrament of commemoration." Even 
Peter Lombard, in his Sentent. Lib. 4. Distinct. 12. G., states, 
that the institution is " Memoria, et representatio, et recordatio ; 
the memorial, and representation, and remembrance" of Christ's 
death on the cross. Radulphus Canon. Observ. avows, that the 
evangelical institute is commemorated "in memoriam passionis; 
in remembrance of the passion," resurrection, and ascension of 
our Lord Jesus Christ. Gabriel Biel, a most furious adherent 
of the Papacy, Can. Miss. Leet. 53., uses these remarkable 



280 " LYING WONDERS AND 

words : " A Christo corpus ejus oblatum est in mortem, sed in 
mortis recordationem ofFertur. Unde nostra oblatio non est 
reiteratio suae oblationis, sed representatio. Christ offered his 
body to death, but now it is in remembrance of his death; 
whence our oblation is not the repetition, but the representation^ 
of his offering." That is most emphatical testimony ; for in the 
same work, that Gabriel Biel attempts to exalt Roman Priests, 
not only above all terrestrial potentates, but also above all the 
heavenly hosts ; because they can ahcays, and daily do " create 
their Creator P Jahn, in his Dissertat., incontrovertibly evinces, 
that the Papistical sacrifice of the Mass is not found at all in the 
Oriental Liturgies. 

The dogma, that the very body and blood of Christ, transub- 
stantiated from the bread and wine, as deposited in both species 
upon the altar, is truly offered to God b}- the priest in the Mass 
oblation, and is properly sacrificed, was unknown to the Apostles 
and primitive churches. The Council of Trent thus decreed . 
Sess. 22. Can. 2. — " If any person shall say, that, in those 
words, * this do in remembrance of me,' Christ did not consti- 
tute his Apostles to be priests ; or did not ordain that they and 
other priests should offer up his body and blood, let him be 
anathema." 

It was a primitive custom, even from the apostolic era, that 
every believer presented his own offering of bread and wine, 
when they attended the communion. — Justin Martyr. Apolog. 1. 
Sect. 88. — Tertullian Apolog. Cap. 39. In the sixth century, 
the synod of Mascon confirmed that fact ; Canon 4. — Cyprian 
De Oper. et Eleemosyn. 203. The names of those who thus 
made their oblations were publicly recited, and prayers were 
addressed to God on their behalf — Innocent 1. Capitul. ad 
Decent. Cap. 2. 

Subsequently, surviving relatives and friends made presents 
for the communion in the name of the dead and of the martyrs ; 
which were received for tokens of affection, as though the dead 
had actually presented them in person ; and prayers for them 
gradually Avere introduced as well as for the other living com- 



STRONG delusion" OF POPERY. 281 

municants. Thus commenced and was carried on the corrup- 
tion, until it was fully evolved in prayers for the dead, and 
expiatory sacrifices offered for the liberation of souls from 
purgatory. 

The primitive simple offering of bread and wine, also grad- 
ually became perverted, through the use of figurative language, 
into the oblation of the body and blood of Christ ; although the 
ancient ecclesiastical writers admit that the phrase w^as impro- 
perly used. — African Canon 38. — Martin Bibliothec. Juris 
Can. 26. App. The third of the " Canons of the Apostles" 
affirms, that " nothing is used in the communion but bread and 
wine." — Ireneus Lib. 4. Cap. 18. — Justin Martyr Dialog, cum 
Tryphon. 260. — Gregory Nazianzen Apolog. 1. With them 
agree Athenagoras ; Cornelius ; Clemens Alexand. ; Origen ; 
Chrysostom ; Augustin Divers. Gluest. 62 ; and Epist. 98. But 
the most remarkable "testimony is found in the Clementine 
Liturgy, or Constitut. Apostol. Lib. 8. Cap. 12 ; in which are 

these words Trpoacpepo^tv coi Tco PaatXtt Kai Beoi rov aprov rovrov. Kai to 

TTorripiov TOVTO, svxapiarTOVVTeg col Sl avrov ; We offer tO thoO, O King and 

God, this bread and this cup, giving thanks to thee by him ;" 
and we pray thee to be propitious to these gifts now presented 
to thee; and '' em rrjv Ovaiav raww, u^on this sacrifice," that thou 
wilt send thy Holy Spirit, the witness of the Lord's passion, 

*'o7rwj a7ro(f>r]vr] rov aprov rovrov crcona rov ^piarov aoVj who OXhibltS thlS 

bread, the body of thy Christ." 

To that doctrine all the ancient Liturgies assent, — those of 
Chrysostom, Basil, Cyril, and Gregory; while the primitive 
Liturgy, which on account of its great antiquity, was falsely 
ascribed to the Apostle Peter, expressly declares — ^' T:poa(ptpoiicv 

CK r(ji)v (TOiv Soipsoiv Kai ^apic-naroiv Ovaiav KaOapaVj Ovaiav ayeaVj Bvaiav a/^Wjuoi/, 
aprov ayiov ^o)ng aicoviov Kai rrurripiov acorrjpias asvvaov.^' In WIllCil WOruS 

the bread and wine are emphatically designated as the symboli- 
cal offering of eternal life and salvation. It is therefore evident, 
that Transubstantiation and the Mass are not revealed in the 
Sacred Scriptures, and are not found in the genuine remaining 
antiquities of the original churches. 
24* 



282 *' LYING WONDERS AND 

The abrogation of the cup in the Lord's Supper is a new and 
manifest corruption, unheard of anterior to the end of the twelfth 
century ; and not received as an ecclesiastical observance prior 
to the Council of Constance, in the year 1415, by whom that 
overthrow of the Lord's institution was ratified. — ^Justin Martyr 
Apolog. 1. Sect. 87. — Cyprian Epist. 7. 63. — Cyril Jerus. 
Catech. Myst. 5. Cap. Ult. — Leo Serm. 41. Cap. 5. Gratiande 
Consecrat. Distinct. 2. Can. 11, uses the ensuing words; and 
they are the more remarkable, because he was the author of the 
volume of the Decretals, w^hich formerly was the very redoubt- 
able castle of the Papacy. *' Divisio unius ejusdemque mys- 
terii sine grandi sacrilegio non potest pervenire. The division 
of one and the same mystery cannot be done without great 
sacrilege." Gregory the Great, as he is called by the Papists, 
even in the Antiphonal. et Lib. Sacram. Missa de Beat. Virgin, 
thus announced the prayer — '• Libera, nos, &c. qui * * * * et 
sanguinem tuum pro nobis effusum bibimus — Deliver us from 
all evil, O Lord Jesus Christ ; who eat thy holy body, crucified 
for us, and who drink thy blood shed for us!" In short, there 
is not one of the Papal writers w^ho pretends to deny, that the 
taking away of the cup is a very recent custom ; and also, unless 
the Mass- wafer contains by Transubstantiation the blood equally 
with the body, that their whole superstitious ceremony is either 
a blasphemous mockery, or a full tissue of idolatry. 

It is a novel opinion, which was totally unknowm to the 
primitive churches, that the consecration and change of the sym- 
bols are effected b}^ the use of those words alone — *' Hoc est 
corpus meir.m." Justin Martyr places the consecration in thanks- 
giving and prayer. — Apolog. 1. Sect. 85. To which Ireneus 
agrees ; Lib. 4. Cap. 34. Cyril Jerus. clearly affirms the same 
doctrine; Catech. Myst. Sect. 4. To w^hom may be added Chry- 
sostom Homil. 34 ; and also many of the Popish authors, with 
the ancient Roman Missals ; the Galilean, Cap. 5 ; the Missal of 
Illyricus and Bona ; the Gothic, Lib. C. ; and the Missals of 
Germanus and Ambrose. 

It is a recent error unknown to the apostolic and primitive 



STRONG DELUSION OF POPERY. 283 

churches, that by consecration, the bread and wine are transub- 
stantiated into the body and blood of Christ, so that except the 
accidents only, nothing of the bread and wine remains. Ail 
the most ancient writers verify this proposition, of whom four 
only shall be distinctly quoted. Theodoret Dialog. 1, speaking 
of the bread and wine thus writes — ''Ovtyjv tpvaiv ixerapaXcxiv, aXXa mv 
xapiv rrj (pvau TrpoaTeBtiKois] not changing the nature, but adding to 
the nature grace." Chrysostom also, in his memorable epistle 
to Caesarius ; having stated that bread was used in the Lord^s 
supper, adds ; although after it is consecrated, " dignus est habi- 
tus dominici corporis appellatione, etiamsi natura panis in ipso 
permansit — that it is held worthy to be called the Lord's body, 
yet the nature of bread remains in it." — Gelasius, a Roman Pon- 
tiff, in his tract De Duob. Natur., remarks — '*Esse non desinit 
substantia, vel natura panis et vini ; the substance or nature of 
bread and wine does not cease to be." Isidore Hispalensis, 
Origin. Lib. 6. Cap. 19, who wrote in the seventh century, de- 
clares ; '* Panis et vinum ideo corpori et sanguini Domini com- 
parantur ; quia sicut visibilis hujus panis, vinique substantia 
anteriorem nutrit hominem, ita verbum Dei, qui est panis vivus, 
participatione sui fidelium recreat mentes : The bread and wine 
are compared to the body and blood of the Lord, because as the 
substance of the visible bread and wine nourishes the exterior 
man, so the word of God who is the living word, by partaking 
of him, refreshes the minds of belie\^ers." To which it must 
be remarked ; that no one of the Popish blasphemous dogmas, 
as it was first promulged by Paschasius, received a more stern 
and general opposition from the best and most erudite Chris- 
tians at that period, the eighth century ; than the impious ab- 
surdity of Transubstantiation. 

The use of the Latin language in public rites, and especially 
at the Mass, with the tacit repetition of the service, in a voice 
unheard, is a new and irrational corruption of Romanism, de- 
structive of all edification, and contrary to apostolic injunctions. 
OrigenAdvers. Celsum,Lib. 8. Basil Homil. Psalm 38. Serm. 1, 
Justinian Novell. 137. Cap. 6. enacts — " Jubemus, &c. Wecom* 



284 '' LYING WONDERS AND 

mand that all ministers, shall offer prayers with a voice which 
shall be heard by all the people, that their minds may be raised 
to higher devotion to bless and praise God." 1 Corinthians, 
Chapter 14. 

The solemn elevation of the Eucharistic symbols as soon as 
they are consecrated, which cause of adoration is usual through- 
out the Popedom, is a late corruption not introduced prior to the 
twelfth century; and the worship of the bread is entirely con- 
trary to the custom of the apostolical and primitive churches, 
which was not adopted until after the dogma of Transubstantia- 
tion was invented. 

The elevation of the host and the cup by the Roman Priest 
is done, as the Romanists assert, expressly that they may be 
adored. But no hint or example of that idolatry is discoverable 
in pristine ecclesiastical history. Menardus Notis ad Sacram. 
Gregorian. 373, affirms, that the custom of lifting the elements 
to be adored "is not ancient." In the Mozarabic Missal; it is 
said, that the elements are elevated not to be adored, but to be 
" seen by the people, videatur a populo." The first writer who 
makes mention of elevating the mass-wafer for the sake of adora 
tion is Durantes, who about the end of the thirteenth century 
wrote a work entitled Rationale Divinorum Officiorum ; and 
in the fourth book, De Sext. Part. Canon, he thus affirm.s — 
*' hostiam hunc in finem elevari ut populus ex hoc cognoscens 
consecrationem factam, et Christum super altare venisse, reve- 
renter ad terram prosternatur : The host is elevated that the peo- 
ple knowing by it that the consecration is done, and that Christ 
has come down upon the altar, may reverently prostrate them- 
selves upon the earth." — A Synod held at Paris, a short time 
anterior to that period, decreed that all the people should bow to 
the host, " tanquam Domino et creatori ; as to their Lord and 
Creator." The Albigenses always maintained that the Mass 
was a contrivance of Romish Priestcraft contrary to the Scrip- 
tures. " La Messe avec la transubstantiation etoit de 1' invention 
des hommes, non de I'ordonnance de Christ, ni de ses Apostres." 
Perrin Histoire des Chretiens Albigeois ; 8. 



STRONG delusion" OF POPERY. 285 

Notwithstanding the total silence of ancient annals, and the op- 
position of the best men in the Papacy, the Council of Trent 
decreed — "Nullum dubitandi locum esse, ^c. There is no 
doubt, that all believers, according to the universally received 
custom of the churches, gave the worship of Latria, v^hich is 
due to the true God, to that most holy sacrament." But that 
declaration is in profound contradiction to all antiquity. Justin 
Martyr Apolog. Prior, says — "roj/ Osov fxovov Sei Trpoc-Kweiv) God 
alone must be adored." Theophilus ad Autolych. Lib. 1. 49 ; 
and Tertullian ad Scapulam, Cap. 2 ; and Fructuosus Num. 62 ; 
and Dionysius Epist. ad CEmilian. preserved by Eusebius in 
his Hist. Eccles. Lib. 7. Cap. 1 1 ; and Origen cont. Celsum, 
Lib. 1 ; 10; and Cyprian Epist. 58; and many others who are 
enumerated and cited by Dallaeus, in his Object. Cult. Relig. 
Lib. 1. Cap. 2, 3, 4; all directly oppose the Tridentine dogmas. 

The Romanists attempt to evade the application of the truth, 
by asserting that the Mass-wafer is Christ, the most high God, 
and the creator of the universe ; and to support that impious po- 
sition, they claim all antiquity ; and have forged, erased, and 
interpolated into all the primitive writings. But notwithstanding 
all their literary frauds and corruptions, they are confounded ; 
for Justin Martyr Apolog. I. Sect. 86 ; and Ireneus Lib. 4. Cap. 
34, and Lib. 5. Cap. 2; and Clemens Alexand. in his Pedagog. 
Lib. 2. Cap. 2; and Origen Comment. Matthew 15: 17; and 
Cyprian de Lapsis, 133; all affirm plainly and exactly the 
modern Protestant doctrine respecting the Lord's Supper. 

In all their controversies with the Pagans, the primitive 
Christians invariably maintained — that to adore " a^vx«, xat vtK^a^ 
Kai Ocov iJiop(priv fi£ cxovra, mutablc things without life, and not having 
the form of God," is not only most criminal, but most stupid and 
ridiculous. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Clemens Alex., Arno- 
bius, Minucius Felix, Cyprian, and others, are full of that 
testimony. — Dallaeus De Relig. Cult. Object. Lib. 1. Cap. 18. 
and 19. 

One primitive ceremonial circumstance completely destroys all 
the Papal blasphemous assumptions. The ancients never kneeled, 



286 " LYING WONDERS AND 

but always stood at the celebration of the Eucharist. Dionysius 
in his Epistle ; Eusebius Hist. Eccles. Lib. 7. Cap. 9 ; describes 
the communicant as ^^Tpam^rj Trapaaravra, Standing" at the table, 
Valesius also, when annotating upon that paragraph, says: 
"Fideles * * * * de manu presbyteri stantes non ut hodie, 
genubus flexis, accipiebant ; Believers received the elements from 
the hand of the minister standing, not as at present, kneeling." 
Chrysostom. Homil. 20, on the second Epistle to the Corin- 
thians, repeats the same fact. Hahertus confirms that statement 
by his testimony; Archieratici Pars. 8, Observat. 10. This for- 
mula occurs in the ConStitut. ApOStol. " Op%i aroi^sv /caXw?, ctwiasp 
to\aP(x)g, (TTOiiiCv ^era <po,Sov deov, Kai Karavv^eo)? ; WQ Stand beCOmingly erect J 

we stand reverently ; we stand wdth the fear of God, and with 
heartfelt compunction." 

That the same mode existed jimong the Greeks, is acknow- 
ledged by Cardinal Bona, Rerum Liturg. Lib. 2. Cap. 17. Sect. 
2. The Council of Nice, Canon 20, enacted ; that " the people 
shall stand Avhen they pay their vows to God." Braccarensis, 
in the sixth century. Can. 57, Juris Canonici Append, narrates, 
that it was then the established custom ; " Stantes oramus ; etiam 
omnibus diebus dominicis, id ad altare observatur^ — standing we 
pray, which is the practice at the communion every Lord's day." 
Epist ad Januarium, Cap. 15. The third Council of Tours, 
held in the year 813, appointed in their nineteenth Canon, Har- 

duin Concil. Vol. 4. " Presbyteri, pueris aut aliis qui- 

buslibet personis adstantibus, indiscrete, non tribuunt ; Priests 
shall not give the elements indiscriminately to boys and all other 
persons standing around." Fortunatus, in the ninth century, 
De Eccles. Offic. Lib. 3 : and Hmcmar, of Rheims. Epist. 2. 
Ad Imperator. Carol um Calv. both admonish all the peo- 
ple — " Eucharistiam sumturos cum omni reverentia adstare, 
to stand near, and with all reverence to receive the Eucharist ;" 
and in his Epist. 7. he expressly states — *' In Missa stare solent ; 
they stand at Mass." In the canon of the Mass at the present 
day, they formally supplicate for all standing around;" although 
that primitive custom has been abolished. 



287 

It is therefore certain, that kneeling before the sacramental 
elements was not introduced prior to the thirteenth century. 
That superstitious practice was first adopted in Germany by 
Cardinal Guido, " w^ho appointed that all the people should 
prostrate themselves before the host at the sound of the bell." 
Caesar Heisterbacensis Illust. Mirac. et Hist. Memorab. Lib. 9. 
Cap. 51. — Raynald Annal. Eccles. Vol. 13. and Cardinal Bona 
Rerum Liturg. Cap. 13. state, that an attempt was made to in- 
stitute that impioi^s ritual, in the year 1203. Notwithstanding, 
in the Council of Lyons which assembled in 1274, at the High 
Mass celebrated by Pope Gregory X. the elements were admin- 
istered "stantibus GraBcis juxta altare, to the Greeks standing 
around the altar."— Harduin Concil. Vol. 7; 690. From 
which evidence it is verified, that kneeling at the celebration of 
the Eucharist is one of the most recent corruptions of Popery. 

He who worships any thing with the adoration which is due 
to Grod alone, ought to be assured that it is divine. The Lord 
Jesus, John 4 : 22, condemned the Samaritans, because they did 
not know what they worshipped ; and the Romanists are ob- 
noxious to the same censure. No person can know whether 
all the conditions which they say are necessary to the sacrament, 
truly are comprised. Whether it be the proper bread ; or whe- 
ther the minister be duly ordered ; or whether there is a suffi- 
cient intention on the part of the priest ; or whether the words 
of consecration are accurately pronounced; who of the peo- 
ple can be certain that those essential requisites are present ? but 
without them, the Papists avow that there is not a true conse- 
cration. Busenbaum Medul. Theolog. Moral. Lib. 6. Tract. 3. 
Cap. 1. Dub. 3. — Bellarmin Justificat. Lib. 3. Cap. 8. acknow* 
ledges, that "no person can be certain that he beholds the true 
sacrament; because there is no sacrament without the intention 
of the minister — "et intentionem alterius nemo videre queat; 
and no person can see another's intention." Therefore as no 
priest consecrating, and no person adoring, can certainly know 
whether the consecration is accomplished ; and as no person can 
distinguish a consecrated from a not consecrated host ; all the 



288 "LYING WONDERS AND 

parties, by their own principles, are involved in gross and 
glaring idolatry. 

Besides, admitting that the consecration and transubstantiation 
are verily accomplished, to what class of things shall the remain- 
ing accidents of bread and wine be referred ? The Papists do 
not acknowledge them as corporeal substances. They are not 
spirits. They must be creatures, or phantasms, or empty ap- 
pearances of things. Hence, the apparition of the symbol ap- 
pertains to a phantasm or a creature ; eithei; of which is con- 
trary to true worship and impious. — Exodus 20: 3, 4, 5. — 
Deuteronomy 4 : 15, &c. ; and 6 : 13 ; and 10 : 20. — Isaiah 42: 
8. — Aymon Metamorphoses de la Religion Romaine, 236. As 
adoration is totally repugnant to the character of the elements, 
whoever worships the bread is consequently an Idolater; of 
which bowing down, and other honors, Pope Urban IV., in the 
year 1261, was the first pontifical author. — Harduin Concil. 
Vol. 7. The splendid pomp and peregrinations of the Festival, 
denominated by the Romanists Corpus Christi, are yet more 
recent, according to Genebrard, a most violent Babylonian ; who 
asserts that that great Papistical imposture and revelry were in- 
vented in Patavia, at least one hundred years after the idolatry 
of the bread Avas originally enacted, as the necessary adjunct of 
that blasphemous dogma, Transubstantiation. 

The impiety and the fallacy of that cardinal " strong delusion" 
of Romanism will clearly be understood from the preceding con- 
cise development of the interminable controversy respecting the 
Mass. Upon the impious assumption that the Roman priest, to 
quote their own "great blasphemies," ''creates his Creator,^^ 
all the Popish system now rests. The expiatory unbloody sa- 
crifice ; works of supererogation ; wax-lights ; incense ; altare ; 
kneeling at the Eucharist ; praying to Images ; prayer for the 
dead ; priestly power ; purgatory ; soul-masses ; and, in short, 
the entire tower of Babylon, with its *' image of gold," all are sus- 
pended upon this proposition, that the absurdity of Transubstan- 
tiation is the prime doctrine of "the oracles of God:" but as 
that theorem is absolutely impossible, the apostolic declaration is 



289 

true — that the Roman priests who inculcate that "damnable 
heresy," "are false teachers;" 2 Peter 2: 1, 2; 2 Thessalo- 
nians 2: 3 — 12; and that the Papists who profess to credit it, 
are given up to " strong delusion, that they should believe the 
LIE, denying the Lord; and bringing upon themselves swift 
destruction." 

Transubstantiation, which is the corner-stone of the Western 
Antichristian apostacy, must ere long be obliterated. Then will 
be witnessed the grand catastrophe that is pronounced by " the 
spirit of prophecy and the testimony of Jesus" upon the Papal 
hierarchy — 

The cross-capp'd towers, the gorgeous Vatican, 

The impious Mass-house, Babylon itself, 

Yea, all which it inherits shall dissolve ; 

And like that unsubstantial pageant faded, 

The flitting mummery of Rome's fantastic shows, 

Leave not a wreck behind 



NOTES. 

CAUTILiE OR CAVEATS FOR MASS PRESTS. 
From tJve Roman Missal, 

It is needless to affix any notes or observations to this extraordinary 
exposure, of what the inventors and upholders of Transubstantiation are 
driven to, in order to guard their Breaden God. Are these practices 
consistent with the " reasonable service" of the gospel % Is the grossness 
here exhibited, involving such a multitude of doubts and difficulties, ab- 
surdities and abominations, consistent with the honor due to him, who is 
God over all, blessed for ever — and whose required worship, is that of 
spirit and truth 1 

Instructions to be observed by the Priest who is to say Mass. 

I. The priest who is to celebrate mass ought well to prepare his own 
conscience by pure confession: let him earnestly desire the sacrament, 
and fully to make it. 

He is to get without book a little note of the manner of doing his duty. 
Let his gestures be very composed and devout ; for whereas every one 
is obliged to love God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with 
25 



290 CAUTILiE FOR PRIESTS. 

all his strength ; he is not approved to love God, who shall appear at the 
table of the altar, where the King of kings, and Lord of all, is handled, 
and taken, if he be irreligious, undevout, impudent, distracted, a vaga- 
bond, or an idle person. 

Let every man therefore consider that he sits at a great table, let him 
consider how he ought to be prepared, let him be wary and circumspect. 

Let him stand upright, not leaning on the altar ; let him join his elbows 
to his sides : let him lift up his hands moderately, so that the tops of his 
fingers may be seen even with his shoulders. Let him fit his understand- 
ing to the words and signs, crosi,ts, for great things lie hid in the signs, 
greater in the words, but greatest ot al.lin the intention. 

Let him join three fingers, with~which let him make the crosses ; let 
him fold the other two in his hand. 

Let him make crosses directly, not obliquely, and high enough, lest he 
overthrow the chalice, let him not make circles for crosses. But when 
he must bow, let him bow with his whole body bent, not obliquely, but 
directly, before the altar. 

II. He must not only think, or suppose, but certainly know, that he 
has the requisite materials ; wheaten bread, and wine, with a little 
water. Thus he shall know that he hath both wine and water; let him 
order the clerk to taste both the wine and the water, for the priest him- 
self ought not to taste them. 

Let him pour a drop into his hand, chafe it with his finger, and smell 
to it, and so he shall be sure. Let him not trust to the wine cruet, nor 
to the color, because they often deceive a man. Let him take heed that 
the chalice be not broken, or cracked ; let him also take heed to the wine, 
for if it be corrupt, he may in no wise celebrate — if it be sour, let him dis- 
semble. If too waterish, let him forbear, unless he knows that there is 
more wine than water. 

And in every case, if there happens a doubt by reason of sourness, 
mixture, or limpidity, transparency or clearness, whether it may be 
made, we advise him to forbear, because in this sacrament nothing must 
be done doubtfully, wherein these words certainly must be said, For this 
is my body, and this is the cup of my blood. 

Likewise let him choose the even est and roundest hosts, and pour in a 
competent portion of wine; for this sacrament ought to serve the senses 
of seeing, touching, and tasting, that they may be refreshed by the out- 
ward show, and the understanding nourished by the thing contained 
therein. 

Let water also be poured in a very small quantity, and let it have the 
relish of wine, for there is no danger by putting in little water, but by 
putting in too much. 

The water is put in only for a signification, and one drop signifies as 



CAUTIL^ FOR PRIESTS^ 291 

much as a thousand. Let the priest therefore take heed that he pour it 
m not too fast, for fear there run in too much. 

III. He must read the canon more leisurely than the rest, and espe- 
cially from that place — who the day before he suffered took, &c. For then 
taking breath, he ought to be attentive and recollect himself wholly. If 
he could not do it before, minding every word he pronounces. 

Whilst he shall say, take ye, a^id eat ye all of this, he is to take breath, 
and then with one breath let him speak these words, Hoc est enim Corpus 
meum — For this is my body. So no other thought Will disturb him. It 
seems not reasonable to discontinue so short, so high, so effectual a 
form, whose entire virtue depends upon the last word, to wit, my, which 
is spoken in the person of Christ, therefore, there ought no stop or point 
to be made between these words, considering that there is no reason to 
lead any man so to do, as to point it thus — for, this, is, my, body, but that 
the whole sentence be pronounced entire. Likewise in consecrating the 
blood the same form is to be observed. 

In like manner when the priest pronounceth the words of consecration 
in every matter, let him always intend to make that which Christ insti- 
tuted, and the church also does. 

IV. If he has many hosts to consecrate, he must lift up one of them, 
that which he has pitched upon for himself when he began the mass, and 
he must let it lie among the rest, provided he directs his intention to 
them all, both in crossing and saying, this is my body, and must think 
upon as many as he lifteth up, or hath before him. 

We advise also, that the priest get the canon by heart, for so he may 
say it more devoutly, yet let the book be always before him, because if 
he should chance to miss, he may have recourse to it. 

V. He must so gently handle the chalice, that by no surprise of a sud- 
den cough it should rush against any tiling ; but let him take it gingerly, 
so as that he may have no impediment. 

But when he shall take many hosts, as when the host is to be renewed, 
let him first take that which he hath consecrated, and the blood likewise, 
and then those that remain ; yet let him take his own before any of the 
others, because he believes and is assured of his own ; of the others, he 
believes, but is not certain ; finally, let the washings be. 

VI. He must not concern himself with too many names in the caTwn 
or memento ; but as often as he thinks fit, he may do it, and when he 
pleases omit it : because the canon by multitudes of names is tedious, 
and by that cogitation is distracted. 

Yet it is reasonable, that he remember /^^A^r, mother, brother, and sis- 
ter, and such as he thinks meet in that season to be recommended, espe- 
cially those for whom he says mass. Yet let there be no vocal but a 
MENTAL expression. 



292 CAUTILiE FOR PRIESTS. 

VII. He must take care when he washeth his mouth or teeth, that he 
swallow not down the taste of water with his spittle. 

If the Priest should by chance swallow down a drop of water when he 
washeth his mouth, yet in the opinion of the doctors, he may say mass, 
unless he should do it of set purpose. 

Hereunto agreeth Richard Distinct. 4. Thomas says; Unless he 
swalloweth it not down in great quantity: with those also Angelus de 
Clavasio, in his Summary, agrees. Let him take heed of spitting after 
mass as much as he can, until he hath eaten and drank j and that for 
reverence sake, and also for fear that something sticking in his teeth or 
wind passage, should that way be spit out. 

VIII. Although the mass is very devoutly to be celebrated for the sake 
of contemplations ; yet there is a mean to be observed, lest the man be 
noted to be over tedious, or too short : for hastiness is a sign of negli- 
gence, and tediousness is an occasion of distraction both to him and his 
auditors; both those William of Paris rebukes in his book of Divine 
Rhetoric; but he that useth a 'niean^ acts safest; now every Priest ought 
to have this regard, as to say every mass, with such affection, as if he 
had said his first mass, and as if he should never say more , for every 
such great gift ought always to be new. 

Therefore, the priest must have great care in his consecration, great 
reverence in his handling, and devotion in the receiving it. And in his 
so feeling and doing, the sacrament shall be worthily ministered, he shall 
rightly perform his office, and perils and offences shall be avoided. 

IX. Likewise in saying of his collects, let an odd number always be 
observed, if it may be conveniently done, except it happens ordinarily 
that he must do otherwise. He must say one for the unity of the di- 
vinity; three for the trinity of persons ; five, for the five-fold passion of 
Christ, and his wounds ; and seven, for the seven-fold grace of the 
Holy Spirit. 

It is not expedient to exceed the number of seven, lest he forget many. 
But such as can do otherwise may do it in their private masses 

In the masses for the dead, no prayer is said but of the dead, save that 
prayer only, O almighty and everlasting God, who hast power over mdcJc 
and dead, (^c. Because it maketh also mention indifferently of the dead, 
and that in the private mass. 

Likewise so often as the prayer is made to God the Father alone, he 
must say at the end of it, through thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ. 

But if it be made to the Father, and any mention is made therein of 
the Son, then he must say at the end through the same our Lord Jesus 
Christ thy Son; and if the prayer be made only to the Son, then he must 
say in the end, who livest and reignest God with the Father and the Holy 
Spirit, world loithout end. Amen. 



CAUTILiE FOR PRIESTS. 293 

And if mention be made of the Holy Ghost in any prayer, then must 
be said in the end, in the unity of the said Holy Spirit ^ God^ world without 
end. Amen. 

X. If the Priest begins to find himself ill at the altar after he hath 
consecrated, so that he cannot make an end of the work which he hath 
begun, then if there be any other Priest at hand, and that the sick Priest 
is able to show him the place where he left, he that is in health ought to 
begin there, and so make an end of it ; but if he cannot point him to the 
place, then let him begin at such a place as may be guessed he left at. 
But if there be no Priest present, let another priest be looked for, against 
the morrow, and then let the clerk show him as well as he can where he 
must begin ; but if the clerk be not able to certify him, nor none of those 
that were present, neither can by any means understand where the sick 
Priest dwelleth, then let him say over again the consecration, and make 
an end devoutly. For authority saith, that that cannot be said to be twice 
done, which a man knoweth not w^hetber it were done or not. 

If the Priest happen to miscarry or die, before he come to the canon^ 
it shall not be needful for any other to make an end of the mass. Yet 
nevertheless, if any is willing to celebrate, he must begin at the begin- 
ning of the mass, and devoutly finish it all. 

Now, if he miscarry in the canon, and yet shall have made some signs 
and crosses before the transubstantiation and consecration of the sacra- 
ment: then some other Priest ought to begin again, at the place where 
the other left, and only supply that which remain&lh. 

When the Priest shall happen to miscarry whilst he is consecrating, 
having already in part pronounced some words, and not fully finished : 
sc«me other Priest, in the opinion of Pope Innocent, ought to begin at 
that place ; Who the day before he suffered. 

Nevertheless, if the Priest shall miscarry, the body being once conse- 
crated and not the blood, some other Priest may finish the consecration 
of the blood, beginning at the place, In like manner, 4*c. 

XI. If he perceive, after he hath consecrated the body, that there is 
no wiTie in the chalice, the host shall be put up again fair and clean into 
the corporal case, and when he hath made ready the chalice, let him be- 
gin again in that place, Li like manner, <^c. 

If he perceive before the consecration of the blood, that there is no 
water in the chalice, he shall immediately put some into it, and make 
an end. But if he perceive after he hath consecrated the blood, that 
there is no water in the chalice, yet must he go on, and mingle no water 
then with the blood, for so the sacrament would partly be corrupted. 
Nevertheless, the Priest ought to be sorry, and to be punished for it. 

If after the consecration of the blood he perceives that there was no 
wine put into the chalice, but only water, he ought to put out that water, 
25* 



294 CAUTIL^ FOR PRIESTS. 

and put in wine and water together, always provided that he perceive 
it, before such time as he receiveth the body. And besides, he ought to 
-rehearse the consecration of the hlood^ beginning at this place, In like 
manner J <^c. 

If he perceive this after he hath received the body, he ought afresh 
to take another host to be consecrated anew with the blood ; and reas- 
sume the words of consecration, beginning at that place, Who the day 
before^ d^c. And in the end he roust again take the host that was last 
consecrated, notwithstanding he had received the water and also the 
blood before. 

Yet Pope Innocent saith, that if the Priest feareth to offend, or give 
scandal, by reason of the delay, or tediousness, these words only are suf- 
ficient by which the blood is consecrated. In like manner, ^c. and so re- 
ceive the blood. 

Likewise, if by negligence, it should happen that after the camon is 
read and the consecration finished, there be neither wine nor water in 
the chalice, he ought immediately to pour in both, and the Priest shall 
repeat the consecration from that place of the canon. In like manner after 
he had supped, unto the end. Nevertheless, he must not make the two 
crosses, which are severally made over the host. 

Now, if thou wouldest know what the Priest should do, when as after 
he hath received the body, he hath water in his mouth, and is certain 
that it is so indeed, whether he ought to swallow it down, or spit it out, 
thou must look for that in the Summary of Hostiensis, Title, '' Conse- 
cration of the Mass." 

Howbeit, it is better for him to swallow it down, than to spit it out, 
lest haply when he spits out the water, he cast up some crumb of bread 
withal. 

XIL Likewise, if the Priest, after consecration, remembers that he 
has been at breakfast, or has committed any deadly sin, or is excommu- 
nicated, he must be contrite, or at least, desire the grace of contrition, 
and then he may well enough go on, so he purpose to make satisfaction 
and desire absolution. 

Howbeit, if before the consecration, he remembers himself concerning 
the things aforesaid, it were safer for him to leave the mass begun, and 
get absolution; unless by so doing some scandal may arise. 

XIII. If a fly, spider, or any such thing, fall into the chalice before 
consecration, or if it be perceived that any body has poisoned it, that 
wine must be poured out, and when the chalice is washed clean, there 
must be other wine mixed with water, put in to be consecrated. 

But if any of these things happen after the consecration, then shall he 
slyly take the fly, spider, or any other such thing, and diligently wash it 
between his fingers, over some other chalice in divers waters, and so 



CAUTIL/E FOR PRIESTS. 295 

burn the vermin, aod put the water that washed it, with ashes into the 
pix ; or, if it can be done without aboviination and horror^ let the Priest 
take it. 

But if it may probably be feared, that the nature of the wine is infected 
with poison, or that the Priest dares not receive it for fear of vomiting 
it up, or over much horror, let it then be burned, as before, for the poison 
by no means must be taken; but the blood wherein the poison is, must 
be kept in a clean vessel with the reliques. And lest the sacrament 
should be imperfect, he must again in due order make ready the chalice, 
and rehearse the consecration of the blood, beginning at the place, In 
like manner^ d^c. According to the doctors, no abominable thing ought 
to be received by occasion of this sacrament. 

XIV. If the Priest forgets to say some of those things he ought to 
have said, he ought not to be troubled in mind for it. For he that speak- 
eth much, doth not always remember what he saith ; yea, although he 
certainly knoweth that he hath left out somewhat, yet let him go on, and 
make no rehearsal thereof, considering that there are no such things ne- 
cessarily required in the sacrament as are secrets or some other words of 
the canon ; nevertheless, if he manifestly perceive, that he hath left out 
somewhat that of necessity is to be used in the sacrament, as the form of 
the words of consecration, he ought to rehearse over again all the words 
of the consecration upon that matter ; for othervnse it should, he no con- 
secration, which he needed not do, if many other things had been omit- 
ted. This conjunction, eniw,^ for, or the rest of the words which go be- 
fore, or follow after the form, are not of its substance. — But if the Priest 
should stand in doubt whether he had left out some word appertaining 
to the substance in form or not, he ought by no means to keep the form, 
but may, without any rash assertion, amend all the order and the form, 
concerning his own matter, with this intention, that if he had once con- 
secrated, he would by \io means consecrate again ; but if he had not so 
consecrated, that then ne would consecrate both body and blood. 

XV. If any Priest at any time of the consecration, be distracted of 
his actual intent and devotion, yet nevertheless, he consecrateth, consid- 
ering that the habitual and virtual intent remaineth still in him. For 
the chief priest Christ Jesus supplieth his defect. But if, through over 
great distraction he lose both the habitual and actual intent, which sel- 
dom or never comes to pass, he ought to reassume the words of consecra- 
tion with the fictual intent : and yet in such sort, as that he would not 
consecrate, if he had already consecrated. 

XVI. If the consecrated host fall from the Priest's hands into the 
chalice, either by reason of cold or some other cause, before he hath di- 
vided the host, or after, he shall in no v/ise take it out, nor begin again 
any of the consecration, nor yet alter any thing about the celebration of 



296 CAUTIL^ FOR PRIESTS. 

the sacrament ; but proceed with- his crossings and the rest of his busi- 
ness, as if he had had it between his hands. But if the eucharist falls 
to the ground, then let the earth whereon it fell be scraped up and burned 
to ashes and the ashes be bestowed, or kept, near the altar. *^ 

XVII. If through neglect, any of the blood drop down upon the ta- 
ble, that sticketh fast to the ground, let the Priest lick up the blood with 
his tongue, and let the place where it fell be scraped, and the scraping be 
burned, and the ashes kept about the altar, with the reliques. Accord- 
ing to the canons, let the Priest do penance forty days, or otherwise let 
hjm make due satisfaction, at the discretion of a wise confessor. 

But if the chalice drop down upon the altar, let him suck up the drop 
and do penance three days, but if the drop fall upon the table cloth, and 
run through unto the second cloth, let him do penance four days; if unto 
the third cloth, let him do penance nine days ; if unto the fourth cloth, let 
him do penance twenty days, and let the Priest or the Deacons wash the 
cloths, which the drop touched, in three several waters over the chalice, 
and let ihe washings be laid up and kept with the rest of the reliques. 

XVIII. If any man through chance, or surfeit, vomit up the eucha- 
rist, the same vomit shall be burned to ashes, and the ashes thereof to be 
bestowed and kept about the altar. 

If any clerk, monk, friar, priest, or deacon do it, let him do penance 
forty days ; a bishop seventy days, and a layman thirty. But if any man 
cast it up by reason of sickness, let him do penance five days, or else let 
him as aforesaid, make due satisfaction, at the discretion of his confessor. 

XIX. Whatsoever Priest shall not safely keep the sacrament from 
being eaten up, either by mice, or any other vermin, shall do penance 
forty days. But if any lose it, or if any one piece thereof fall to the 
ground, and the same not possibly to be found again, let him do penance 
thirty days. That Priest, through whose negligence the consecrated 
host shall putrify, is worthy the like penance ! and such a penitent ought 
to fast and abstain from the communion and saying of mass, during all 
those days. 

Nevertheless, in weighing the circumstances of the offence and person, 
the aforesaid penance ought, according to the will of the discreet con- 
fessor, to be either augmented or diminished. 

Nevertheless this is to be hoi den for a sure rule, that wheresoever all 
the whole species of the sacrament are to be found, they are reverently 
to be reverenced, but if it cannot be done without peril, then they are to 
be reserved for reliques. 

XX. If the host or but a piece thereof be found under the patten or 
corporas cloth, and it be doubted whether the same be consecrated or not, 
he ought reverently to receive it, after he hath taken the blood, as is more 
at large set out in the title, " Celebration of the Mass." 



CAUTIL^ FOR PRIESTS. 297 

If the Lord's body given to a sick man or woman, be by him or her 
cast up, through infirmity or any other cause : yet let it be received again 
as carefully and as speedily as may be. And if there can be found none 
that hath so good a stomach as to receive that which the sick body hath 
east up, then let it be burned and the ashes kept in a shrine. 

XXT. The like also of the invetered eucharist, that is, rotten with age, 
set down by the Council of Orleans. Every sacrifice that is spoiled by 
sordid oldness is to be burned, and the ashes thereof to be disposed o? 
near the altar. 

XXII. If the body of Christ being consumed either by mice or wspi- 
ders, cometh to nothing, or be overmuch bitten, if the worm lie whole 
and sound in it, then let it be burned ; but if the remnant that is so bitten, 
may be taken without loathing, it is a great deal better that it be received. 

Likewise, if any man incontinently after the receiving thereof, cast it 
up again, albeit this food of the soul passeth away into the mind, and not 
into the belly, yet for the reverence that is to be had to the sacrament, if 
there be found never so little a piece of the eucharist, let it be reverently 
received again, and the vomiting be burned, and the powder thereof put 
among the reliques. 

XXIIT. As concerning the matter of the blood, take heed it be not 
sharp, or else so small wine, as that it hath no colour of wine, neither 
let it be reddish ivater, stained with a cloth that hath been dyed in red 
wine, let it not be vinegar, nor wine utterly corrupt. Let it not be claret 
wine, nor wine made of mulberries, nor pomegranates, because they keep 
not the true colour of wine. 

Whosoever consecrateth knowingly, and not compelled, with wine that 
is in the way of corruption, or tending that way, grievously sinneth, al- 
though he consecrated : because it keepeth not the colour of wine. 

There must be great care taken that but a little water be put into it j 
for if there should be so much put in as to cause the wine to lose its 
colour, the consecration were of none eifect. 

XXIV. If any part of the wine be spilled before the transubstantia- 
tion, let him change the veile, without any words, and celebrating, prose- 
cute his office. 

If all be spilled, let the cloths be changed, and let him minister it 
again, and begin from " this oblation, therefore,'^ yet always premising a 
confession. 

If any part of the blood be spilled after transubstantiation, yet let not 
the Priest cease to do his office. 

But if it be all spilled, so that there remain no jot thereof, which is very 
hard to do, let him lay it up, on the altar, and minister the bread again, 
and the wine and water also, and begin again from This oblation, there- 
forcj (^c. Always provided that his confiteor, confession, be said ; and 



298 DEFECTS IN THE MASS. 

let the minister or sick body receive the first host, or some other that is 
ready for that purpose. 

If the blood freeze in the chalice, in frosty weather^ the Priest must 
breathe over it a good while, till it be thawed, or with great reverence 
thaw it with quick charcoal, or if it cannot be so thawed, let him swal- 
low it down whole. 

XXV. If there be any other things requisite to this matter, let them 
be sought for in the Breviary, and Lecture of Hostiensis, in the title 
" Celebration of the Mass," or in the Summaries of the new doctors of 
the civil and canon laws, and of the divines. 



DEFECTS IN THE MASS. 



The following paragraphs are extracted from the Roman Missal . 

" Mass may be defective in the matter to be consecrated, in the form 
to be used, and in the officiating mmister. For if in any of those there 
be a defect, due matter, form, with intention and priestly orders in the 
celebrator, there is no sacrament consecrated. 

Defects in the bread. 1. If the bread be not of wheat, or if of wheat, 
it be mixed with such quantity of other grain, that it doth not remain 
wheaten bread; or if it be in any way corrupted, it doth not make a sa- 
crament. 

2. If the bread be made with rose water or other distilled water, it is 
doubtful if it make a sacrament. 

3. If the bread begin to corrupt, but be not corrupted : likewise if it 
be not unleavened according to the custom of the Latin church, it makes 
a sacrament ; but the Priest who consecrates, sins grievously. 

Defects of the wine. If the wine be quite sour, or putrid, or be made 
of bitter or unripe grapes ; or if so much water be mixed with it, that it 
spoils the wine, no sacrament is made. 

If after the consecration of the body, or even of the wine, the defect 
of either kind be discovered, one being consecrated; then if the matter 
which should be placed cannot be had, he must, to avoid scandal, proceed. 

Defects in the form. If any one shall leave out or change any part of 
the form of the consecration of the body and blood, and in the change 
of the words, such words do not signify the same thing, there is no con- 
secration. 

Defects of tJie mimstry. The defects on the part of the minister may 



DEFECTS IN THE MASS. 299 

occur in these things required in him. These are first and especially 
Intention ; after that, disposition of soul, of body, of vestments ; and dis- 
position in the service itself, as those matters which can occur in it. 

If any one intend not to consecrate, but to cheat or banter ; also if any 
wafer remains forgotten on the altar, or if any part of the wine or any 
wafer lie hidden, when he did not intend consecrating but what he saw; 
also if he shall have before him eleven wafers, and intended to conse- 
crate but ten only, not determining what ten he meant : in all those cases 
the consecration fails, because intention is required. 

Should the consecrated wafer or host disappear, either by some acci- 
dent, or by wind, or miracle, or be swallowed by some animal, and so 
cannot be found, then let another be consecrated. 

If after consecration, a gnat, a spider, or any such thing fall into the 
chalice, if the Priest dislike to swallow it, let him take it out and wash 
it with wine, and when Mass is ended, burn it, and cast it and the wash- 
ings into holy ground; but if he can, and fears no danger, let him swal- 
low it with the blood. 

If poison falls into the chalice, or what might cause vomiting, let the 
consecrated wine be put in another cup, and other wine with water be 
again placed to be consecrated; and when mass is finished, the blood 
must be poured on linen cloth, or tow, remain till it be dry, and then be 
burned, and the ashes be thrown into holy ground. 

If the host be poisoned, let another be consecrated and used, and that 
be kept in a tabernacle, &c. until it be corrupted, and after that be thrown 
into holy ground. 

If any of Christ's blood fall to the ground, or bread, by negligence, it 
mtist be licked up with the tongue, the place be suflSciently scraped, and 
the scrapings burned, but the ashes must be buried in holy ground. 

If in winter the blood be frozen in the cup, put warm cloths about 
the cup ; if that will not do, let it be put into boiling water near the altar, 
till it be melted, taking care it does not get into the cup. 

If the Priest vomit the eucharist, and the species remain entire, it 
must be licked up reverently; if a nausea prevent this, then let the con- 
secrated species be cautiously separated, and put by in some holy place 
till it be corrupted, and after be cast into holy ground; but if the species 
appear not, the vomit must be burned, and the ashes be thrown into holy 
ground.'* 



CHAPTER V. 



Immorality — Papal power to abrogate the laws of God — Indulgences — DU 
red legalized sanction of Iniquity — Auricular confession — Blind obedience 
to the Romish Priesthood — Festivals— Superstitious Mummery substituted 
for Holiness, 

The scriptural delineations of the character of Romanism 
are incontrovertible : for all the history of the ten kingdom* of 
the Beast certifies, that Popery poisons the sources of religion 
and morality, and destroys not only ii^dividual decorum and so- 
cial order, but also national security. This general proposition 
now shall be evinced. 

1. Abrogation of the moral law of God.. — The Roman Pon- 
tiffs arrogate and exercise the authority arbitrarily to dictate all 
doctrines of faith, and all principles of morals ; so as to invali- 
date the laws of God, and to sanction every species of crime. 
That plenitude of power they have exhibited by granting dis- 
pensations for every sin, especially for the violation of treaties, 
covenants, promises, and oaths. They have also legalized mar- 
riages which are" prohibited by the divine mandate, and have 
dissolved those which the oracles of God approve. By their 
bulls, servants are discharged from their fidelity ; subjects from 
their obedience ; and friends and relatives from their reciprocal 
obligations. They have also issued canons and decrees which 
destroy all the bonds that unite parents and children, exempting 
the latter from their duty, and exterminating in both all natural 
affection and attachment. Four examplars will demonstrate that 
Popery is incurably inimical to mankind in their social con- 
nection. 

A peace was made between Ladislaus IV. king of Hungary, 
and Amurath the Turkish sultan. Pope Eugenius sent his 



301 

ieg^ite. Cardinal Julian, and commanded Ladislaus to break the 
treaty. The king pleaded his oath ; but the Pope absolved him 
for his perjury; and the war was renewed. In the year 1444, 
a direfiil battle was fought near Varna. It is narrated, that 
Amurath in the midst of the conflict, and when his army ap- 
peared to be almost certain of defeat, took the treaty from his 
bosom, and elevating it towards heaven, exclaimed — " Behold, 
thou crucined Christ, this is the league which thy Christians, 
in thy name, made with me ; and which without any cause they 
have violated. If thou be a Grod, as they say, and as we dream, 
revenge the wrong done unto thy name and unto me ; and show 
thy power upon thy perjured people, who by their deeds deny 
thee their God!"' — The Papist army was utterly discomfited. 
Ladislaus himself was slain. The renowned Hunniades was 
captured by the Turks. Hungary was ruined, so that it has 
never recovered that disaster. The Greek empire was extir- 
pated : for Constantinople was vanquished, and became the seat 
of the Western Mohammedan apostacy. An epitaph was written 
for Ladislaus, admonishing the readers of it, "not to infringe 
their oaths :" and recording the fact, that " the Turks swayed in 
Hungary because the Roman Pontiff had coerced him to break 
the treatj^*' which he had made with Amurath. — Spanheim 
Cent. XV. 

Henry I. king of England, being unwilling to break his pro- 
mise, Pope Calixtus assured him — " I am Pope, and will ab- 
solve you from your promise.*' In consequence of a papal 
dispensation to nullify his father s will. King Henry IL of 
England, although he had sworn to execute it, robbed his own 
brother of his inheritance. — Eadmer Book 5. Page 126. — Inn^ 
Orig. Brit. 306, 344. 

Pope Clement VI. granted to John and Joan, king and queen 
of France, and their successors — " Indulgence to conmiute all 
their vows and oaths, qu/B commode serv-are non possetis, which 
you cannot conveniently observe, by other works, as to the 
confessor should seem expedient. ' — Dacher. Spicileg. Vol. 4. 
Page 256. 

26 



302 " ALL DECEIVABLENESS 

Those acts are especially confirmed by the Decretals of Pope 
Gregory; Par. 2. Can. 15; which thus enact — "Following 
the statutes of our predecessors, by our apostolical authority, we 
absolve all who are bound to excommunicated persons from their 
oaths of fidelity ; and we prohibit them to keep faith with them." 

In reference to matrimony ; they not only dispense to the first 
degree; but they also prohibit marriage to the fourth grade of 
affinity. Both those ungodly acts are perpetrated, that they may 
increase the traffic in dispensations ; while their long catalogue 
of pretended spiritual relationships is merely a contrivance to 
rob their devotees with impunity. It both adds to the divine in- 
junctions, and takes away from the holy law of the all-wise and 
merciful Creator. 

The council of Trent, Sess. 24. Can. 3, 5, declare, that all 
are accursed, who say — " that only the relationships mentioned 
in the book of Leviticus are prohibited from a marriage, and 
that the church," the Pope and the Romish Priests, " cannot 
dispense, or sanction, or dissolve other matrimonial contracts :" 
which jurisdiction they enlarge, so as to include every degree of 
consanguinity except that of parents and children. That coun- 
cil expressly authorize marriages between brothers and sisters 
in these words — " In secundo gradu nunquam dispensetur nisi 
inter magnos principes et ob publicam causam — Dispensations 
for marriage in the second degree shall never be granted except 
to princes or for some piiblic caused But the urgency of that 
" public cause" is determined by the Pope, according as it will 
promote the power and wealth of the Romish hierarchy ; as is 
evident from the case of Henry VIII. of England, and other 
notorious examples. 

Henry VIII. married his brother's widow, through a papal 
dispensation obtained for money ; but as it was supposed more 
perilous to offend the Emperor Charles V, than the British 
monarch, the dissolution of the incestuous bond could not be 
obtained. 

Pope Martin V. who was blasphemously entitled the " Most 
Holy, and Most Blessed Lord of the Universe, Christ of the 



I 



303 

Lord, and Light of the world, who is invested with heavenly- 
power," dispensed with a flagitious sinner, "who contracted and 
consummated matrimony with his own sister, with whom he had 
previously cohabited in incestuous licentiousness." — Antonius 
Pars. 3. Tit. 1. Cap. 11. Sect. 1. — Bellarmin de Matrimon. 
Cap. 28. 

Almaine de Potestat. Eccles. Cap. 12; records, that "Pope 
Martin V., consilio maturo habito, after mature deliberation, dis 
pensed persons for marrying in the second degree of consan- 
guinity which is 'prohibited by the divine law. In our own 
times also, the Pope has granted a dispensation to a man who 
successively married two sisters, contrary to the law of God." 

The Popish monastic institution abrogates not only all the na- 
tural domestic relations, but also every civil bond. It is enacted 
that all ecclesiastical vows and engagements contracted by boys 
at sixteen, and girls at fourteen years of age, without the knov/- 
ledge, and even against the consent of their parents or guardians, 
are valid and inviolable ; so that their relatives or friends can 
legitimately claim no power over them. The laws and practice 
of Romanism in reference to the celibacy and seclusion of monks, 
and especially of Nuns, are a direct infringement of the fifth 
commandment; Matthew 15: 3-9; and not less incompatible 
with personal purity and usefulness, than they are destructive of 
the national welfare. 

11. Indulgences. — From the superabundanftreasury of merits 
derived through works of supererogation by Saints, the Pope 
disposes of indulgences partial and plenary, for time and eter- 
nity, and for a shorter or longer duration. By those indulgen- 
ces ; for joining a crusade against heretics, or for a specified pil- 
grimage, or for visiting Rome at the Jubilee, or for worshipping 
at some particular altar, or for commemorating a certain festival, 
or for mumbling some prayers, or for a pecuniary equivalent ; 
the most obdurate and nefarious criminals, as they declared, were 
absolved from all their guilt, and restored to the divine favor. 

Moulin in his " Buckler of Faith," 213, relates, that the White 
Friars boasted that they had " the privilege to continue in Pur- 



304 *' ALL DECEIVABLENESS 

gatory no longer than until the Saturday after their death." 
That immunity was ratified to them by the Roman Pontiffs, who 
have decreed that their indulgences are equally beneficial to dead 
sinners in purgatory, as to livmg offenders upon earth. 

In 1614, the Franciscans at Rouen promulgated the following 
table of indulgences. *' For every day until the nativity of 'our 
hacly,^ eight hundred and sixty-two thousand years and one 
hundred days of pardon and remission of the third part of sins. 
A plenary remission for all sins without exception, and for the 
advantage of others, a third part of sins besides P^ — Moulin's 
Buckler of Faith, 238. — The Popes also granted indulgences 
to dying persons to carry with them to purgatory for any num- 
ber of years for which the party might be willing to pay ; and 
also for the release of souls which already were in torment. — 
Hist, du Droit, vol. 2. 291. 

Indulgences were the prolific and continuous source of those 
wars which the Popes contrived, and especially of the crusades 
against heretics ; and for remuneration, the ecclesiastical marau- 
ders were authorised to plunder the property, and to defile the 
females, and then to murder them with their relatives, and deso- 
late the lands of those who would not submit to the pontifical 
despotism. Barbarity and wickedness were announced to be the 
most certain avenue and title to plenary pardon and the future 
paradise. 

Avenfinus Anri&l. Lib. 8. 408, testifies, that in the crusade 
against the Earl of Toulouse, the Dominicans declared, that 
" whatever crime a man had committed, even parricide, or incest, 
or sacrilege, or homicide, as soon as the offender assumed the 
badge of the cross, he was released both from the guilt and the 
punishment of it; in consequence of which many miscreants 
assassinated those whom they hated, and instantly after enrolled 
themselves among the * army of faith.' " 

Brochard Desecr. Ter. Sanct. 332, records ; that none of the 
Saracens in Palestine were " so corrupt as the Crusaders." The 
reason for which he thus gives — '* When any one in France, 
Spain, or Germany, or any other nation, is found to be amalefac- 



OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS." 305 

tor, a murderer, a robber, an adulterer, incestuous, or a thief, 
&c., and fears punishment by the judge, he flies to the Holy- 
Land, that by the Pope's indulgences he may cancel his con- 
tracted guilt ; but when he arrived there he did not change his 
character or his conduct." 

Fleuri Hist. Tom. 18, 374, narrates; that in the year 1245, 
a banditti of French "pilgrims" entered Catalonia to seize the 
territories of the King of Arragon, which the Pope had given 
to France on account of the Spanish monarch's resistance to the 
arrogance of^he ungodly court of Rome. "They committed 
the most frightful atrocities ; for they violated the nuns, robbed 
the mass-houses of every thing valuable, and made their march 
visible by their pollutions, massacres, and desolations. Those 
myrmidons of the Pope who could not use military weapons, 
took up stones, and threw them into the air with this declaration 
— " I cast this stone against Peter of Arragon, to gain the in- 
dulgence !" 

In reference to the pardons for muttering over prayers ; in 
all Popish countries, the notice of ''plenary indulgence^^ for re- 
peating the rosary, or a certain number of Pater Nosters and 
Aves, is suspended at multitudes of mass-houses and altars ; and 
to complete the imposture, they hallow^ed butchery, by indul- 
gences which were formerly granted to all persons who assisted 
at the grand roasting of heretics in the Autos da Fe of tlie In- 
quisition.— Hist, du Droit. Tom. 2. 280, 293. 

The wicked delusions and the infamous debauchery of Tetzel 
in Germany, and Sampson in Switzerland, the two monks, 
through w^hose monstrous impieties Martin Luther and Ulric 
Zuingle were first roused to oppose those " pardon-mongers ;" 
with the blasphemous dogmas w^hich they proclaimed, and their 
abominable absolutions; it is altogether superfluous to detail. 
All that " deceivableness of unrighteousness" however was fully 
corroborated by the council of Trent. 

3. Iniquity by law. — According to Popish jurisprudence, 
uncleanness is a venial sin. Houses for impure practices are 
regularly licensed by the Roman court. The Lire of prostitutes 
26* 



306 "ALL DECEIVABLENESS 

is regularly appropriated to the Papal treasury. Not only the 
ordinary vices, but even the crimes that are not so much as 
named among the Gentiles, and sins which would never have 
been heard of or perpetrated, had not Monks and Jesuit Priests 
invented and taught them, are regularly taxed ; and the exact 
price is stipulated, for the pay of which, dispensation and pardon 
can be procured. 

Pope Innocent III. Extravag. Cap. de Bigamis, thus enact 
ed— " Si presb3rteri plures concubinas habentes, bigami censean- 
tur ? Quod cum irregularitatem non incurrerint bigamise, cum 
eis tanquam simplici fornicatione notatis, quod ad executionem 
sacerdotalis officii poteris dispensare." Which means that a Ro- 
man Priest who has a large number of concubines is guilty of 
simple fornication only ; and thereby is not disqualified for the 
sacerdotal ofiice. 

Emmanael Sa Aphor. in Episcop. decides — " Episcopus po- 
test procedere contra quemcunque ob peccatum mortale, nisi esset 
jure permissum, ut meretricium." Which aphorism declares, 
that female prostitution is legally authorised, and therefore is 
not sinful. 

Bauny and other Romish casuists teach that — *' A maid pos- 
sesses her virginity as well as her body ; and she may dispose 
of them to who'^. she pleases, mutilation or death only excepted." 
" Various precepts of the law of nature are so obscure that they 
can scarcely be understood by faithful men ; such is the precept 
concerning fornication, and unchastity, when necessary to 
health!"— Bauny Sum. des Peches, 148. 

In the Decretals, Distinct. 34. Glossa, is the following defi- 
nition of a prostitute — " Meretrix est, qui admiserit plures quam 
viginti tria hominum millia!" — According to which decision, 
there cannot be one strumpet in existence. 

Pope Paul III. maintained at Rome during his pontificate 
forty-five thousand courtezans. Pope Sixtus IV. commanded 
that houses should be erected expressly for them ; and received 
a large annual revenue from the licenses granted to them to 
pursue their lewd course... Upon which Baptist Mantuan, the . 



OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS." 307 

Latin Poet, thus delineated Rome — " Urbs est jam tota lupanar. 
All Rome is a brothel." — Paolo Hist, du Cone, de Trent, Yol. 1. 
Ann. 1537. That character is similar to the statement of Car- 
dinal Hugo ; who impudently informed the people of Lyons, at 
the dissolution of the council held there, that the ecclesiastics 
who had been convened had transformed that city into one con- 
tinuous abode of harlots. 

Of the book which was published at Rome, entitled, " The 
tax hook of the Apostolic Chancery ^^ Claude Espence in his 
Comment, in Epist. ad Tit. Cap. 1, thus writes ; — " Liber palam 
ac publice hie impressus, et hodieque ut olim venalis, Taxa 
Carnerce, seu Cancellarice Apostolicce, inscriptus ; in quo plus 
scelerum discas, quam * * * * et plurimis licentia, omnibus 
absolutio empturientibus proposita. The tax book is now as 
formerly sold, * * * * and license for most of the sins, and ab- 
solution for all of them may be purchased." 

4. Auricular confession. — The Roman penance is one of the 
most mischievous practical evils in the whole system of Baby- 
lonish abominations. By it all tenderness of conscience and 
dread of sin are totally extirpated. The ceremony is only a 
snare for the innocent, and a sanction to the guilty. It is also a 
contrivance of the Popish priestcraft by which the most obdu- 
rate transgressors are emboldened in their presumption. 

The Roman hierarchs have made unbounded preparation for 
training their Priests to become the scourges of humanity. A 
just horror of the system should generate pity for the agents, 
even with all their loathsome vices and cruelties, who have un- 
dergone its influence : for the men we mourn, but the doctrine 
and the Institute we execrate. Circumstances so unfavorable to 
virtue and goodness can scarcely admit aggravation. But they 
have a climax. Auricular confession would entail a thousand 
evils and dangers upon the parties concerned, even apart from 
the unnatural condition to which one of those parties has been 
reduced. But what must we think of auricular confession when 
he into whose prurient ear it is poured lives under the irrita- 
tion of a vow of virginity? The wretched being within whose 



308 . " ALL DECEIVABLENESS 

bosom distorted passions are rankling, is called daily to listen to 
tales of licentiousness from his own sex, if indeed the ambiguous 
personage has a sex, and infinitely worse, to the reluctant or 
shameless disclosures of the other. Let the female be of what 
class she may, simple-hearted or lax, the repetition of her dis- 
honor, while it must seal the moral mischief of the offence upon 
herself, even if the auditor were a woman, enhances it beyond 
measure when the instincts of nature are violated by making the 
recital to a man. But shall we imagine the effect upon the sen- 
timents of him who receives the confession 7 What must that 
receptacle become into which the continual droppings of all the 
debauchery of a parish are falling, and through which the co- ^ 
pious abomination filters ? 

Neither the oath of secrecy, nor the penalty which sanctions 
it, has prevented the disclosure of the abominations of the . 
confessional. In certain notorious books, with astounding in- 
sensibility the Confessarius has divulged the mysteries of his 
art. Bayle thus, writes upon Auricular Confession. " Critics 
are like physicians and surgeons, who in consequence of hand 
ling ulcers, and of being exposed to offensive smells, become so 
habituated to them, that they are not incommoded. It would be 
well if confessors and casuists, whose ears are the drains of all 
the filthiness of human life, could boast of such insensibility. 
They are few who do not make shipwreck of virtue through 
hearing the irregularities of those who confess their sins." In 
reference to one of the Romish books concerning penance he 
thus writes — " In that prodigious volume, as in a great reservoir 
of corruption, are collected all kinds of infamous discussions. 
That astonishing book contains a most subtle examination of all 
imaginable impurity. It is a ' Cloaca^ which incloses horrible 
things unspeakable. It is a shameful work, composed with a 
dreadful curiosity, equally horrible and odious from the diligent 
exactness which pervades it, to penetrate into the most indecent, 
monstrous, infamous, and diabolical actions." But this is in ac- 
cordance with the authoritative dogmas of Popery; for the 
Eomish priesthood rigorously enjoin upon all their disciples, if 



•^ 309 

they would escape perdition, to make the most unreserved^ inti- 
mate, and circumstantial disclosures of their guilt, without which, 
it is said, " the sacred physician cannot he qualified to apply the 
proper remedy." — Council of Trent, Chapter 5. 

The Pontifical hierarchs ever kept in view the purpose of 
rendering their subordinate Priests the fit instruments of what- 
ever atrocity their interests might command them to perpetrate ; 
and thus brought to bear upon their hearts every possible power 
of corruption. Not content with cashiering them of all sana- 
tory domestic influences; by the practice of confession, the Popes 
have arranged and enforced upon them that the full stream of 
human crime and corruption, foul and infectious, shall pass 
through the bosoms of the Roman Priests. In constructing at 
their discretion the polity of the nations, the Papal architects so 
planned it, that the sacerdotal order should constitute the Cloacce 
of the social edifice ; and thus secured for Rome the honor of 
being through those channels the great Stercorary of the world ! 
In the language of prophetic vision that apostate is fitly desig- 
nated — sitting at the centre of the common drainage of Europe, 
as the *' Mother of abominations ;" and as holding forth, in 
shameless arrogance, the cup of the filthiness of her fornica- 
tions ! — Fanaticism ; Section VI. 

In every age and in all countries. Auricular Confession has 
been the fertile source of every possible crime. By it personal 
purity, and all domestic confidence have been annihilated. The 
knowledge of the character, propensities, and circumstances of 
every individual, with the concealment in which it veils all its 
mysterious communications and acts, eradicates the shield of vir- 
tue, and places every person within the controlling power of the 
Priest. It has been shrewdly remarked, that as long as men sit 
in the confessional, women will be the large majority of pre- 
tended penitents ; but if ladies were confessors, the men would 
flock to their mock tribunal of penance. To verify that the 
most scandalous enormities are inseparable from the Romish 
penance, Popes Pius IV. and Gregory XV. issued bulls expressly 
concerning- those Priests who defiled females at confession. In 



310 "all deceivableness 

consequence of the bull by Pope Pius IV. the complaints against 
the profligate Priests were so numerous, that in one city in 
Spain, twenty secretaries were employed during one hundred 
and fifty days to write the details of their wickedness at confes- 
sion; but as it seemed to be no nearer the completion than at the 
commencement, the Inquisitors for the sake of their unholy craft 
quashed the investigation. The obscene rules, and the disgust- 
ing filth iness of that diabolical machination are found in the 
Roman Penitential; Buchart's Decrees, Book 19; and Car- 
dinal Tolet's " Instructions to Priests." 

That the Papal confession and absolution absolutelj^ confirm 
men in the practice of iniquity, is manifest from the most re- 
nowned Romish authors. — Bellarmi7i De Penitent. Lib. 4. Cap. 
13, affirms; that " Papal pardons discharge men from obedience 
to the commandments of God." — Suarez Tom. 4. Part 3. Dis- 
put. 32 ; and Filiucius Mor. Quest. Tom. 1. Tract. 7, decide — 
that "they ought not to be denied or delayed absolution who 
continue in habitual sins, against the laws of God, and of nature ; 
though they discover not the least hope of amendment : and 
though they acknowledge, that the presumption of being ab- 
solved encouraged them to sin with more freedom." — Bauny 
Theolog. Moral. Tract. 4. Quest. 15, 22.— To which Caussin 
adds, page 211 ; "If that doctrine is not true, confession would 
be of no use to the greatest part of the world, and there would 
be no other remedy for sinners than the halter." 

But in a more extended view the pernicious effects of auricu- 
lar confession exceed all description. Under the arrogated 
priestly authority, and tlie inviolable secrecy of the system, se- 
ditions and treasons are invented ; and as all things however 
criminal are prohibited by the canons from being disclosed ; the 
conspirators against the public safety or the existence of the go- 
vernment in ordinary cases are absolutely precluded from all open 
discovery. Nothing which occurs at confession can be revealed, 
except to the Pope himself, in consequence of his plenitude 
of power to abrogate all laws, decrees, and canons. — Binet de- 
clared ; " It is better that all kings were slain, than that one con- 



311 

fession should be revealed ; because confession is by divine, but 
the power of princes by human laws." The several attempts to 
assassinate William, Prince of Orange ; the English gunpowder 
plot; and the history of the French League in the sixteenth 
century, amply corroborate the lamentable fact, that the Popish 
dogma has invariably been practised when an opportunity was 
afforded with impunity. At that period the hierarchs of Rheims 
issued their mandate, prohibiting all the Priests from admit- 
ting to absolution those who would not swear to join the re- 
bellion against the king. Garnet justified himself for not reveal- 
ing the gunpowder plot, because it was communicated to him at 
confession. Henry IV. King of France asked his confessor 
Cotton, what he thought of the Jesuit maxim — " When any one 
devised the murder of a king, the Priest who is informed of it 
at confession, ought to retain the secret." Cotton replied — " It 
is a good and Christian doctrine /" Hist, de I'edit de Nantz. 
Vol. 2: 11, 230. 

Those principles are conformable to the authentic doctrines of 
three remarkable decisions which are promulged by the mod- 
ern Romanists.^ — Lemoyne, Prop. 1. affirms — " A Christian may 
deliberately discard his Christian character, and act as other men, 
in things not properly Christian." — Alagona quotes and sustains 
Thomas Aquinas in his Sum. Theolog. Compend. Quest. 94, 
when he expressly announces — " By the command of God, it is 
lawful to murder the innocent, to rob, and to commit all lewdness ; 
because he is the Lord of life, and death, and all things ; and 
thus to fulfil his mandate is our duty!" — Philopater, Respons. 
ad Edict. Sect. 2. Num. 157, 158, thus proclaims the Papal doc- 
trine upon high treason — "All theologians and ecclesiastical 
lawyers affirm, that every Christian government, as soon as they 
openly abandon the Roman faith, instantly are degraded from 
all power and dignity, by human and divine right. All their 
subjects are absolved from the oath of fidelity and obedience 
which they have taken ; and they may and ought, if they have 
the power, to drive such a government from every Christian 
state, as an apostate, heretic, and deserter from Jesus Christ, and 



312 ''ALL DECEIVABLENESS 

a declared enemy to their republic. This certain and indubita- 
ble decision of all the most learned men, is perfectly conformed 
to Apostolic doctrine." Those are the dogmas which are incul- 
cated constantly by the Papal Priests at Auricular confession, 
from one end of the world to the other, wherever Popery is 
truly promulged. 

5. Blind obedience to the Roman Court and Hierarchy. — The 
principle of entire subordination to the Pope and his inferior ec- 
clesiastics in every grade, is the first, middle, and last attribute of a 
genuine Babylonian. Without it, as they decide, a man is good 
for nothing but to be burnt ; and the possession of that essential 
quality compensates for the total deficiency of every good char- 
acteristic ; and more than atones for ignorance, knavery, licen- 
tiousness, and murder, with every other atrocious crime, which 
are the only claims that are admissible, as a title to the honor of 
canonization, and to the dignity of being worshipped as a Romish 
Saint. 

Bernard in his Epistle 178, thus addressed Pope Innocent — 
*' If there be men, either of the laity, clergy, or monks, who are 
more wicked and profligate than others, they run to your court 
at Rome, and there have sanctuary and protection ; and then re- 
turn to insult those who attempt to correct them." — In his Pen- 
sees diverses sur la Comate, Tom. 2. Sect. 199, Bayle proves — < 
•' That the spirit of Popery is much more contrary to the opinions 
which agree not with it, than to a wicked life. Should a man . 
confess that he did not believe it lawful to invoke the saints, he 
would be dismissed without absolution ; but not if he confessed 
himself guilty of perjury, theft, adultery, or murder. In Spain, 
where an infinity of immoral and scandalous positions may con- 
stantly be uttered without censure ; should any one assert that 
the body of the Apostle James was not in Gallicia, or that the 
Virgin Mary is not the Glueen of Heaven and the world, or that 
she did not ascend to heaven in body and soul ; he would in- 
stantly be dragged to the Inquisition, and thence never depart 
except to the Auto da Fe ;" to be roasted for his want of implicit 
faith in the papal infallibility and supreme jurisdiction. 



313 

6. Festivals. — The Romish holidays are part of the inherent 
wickedness of Popery ; they blT^ merely excuses for priestly im- 
posture and fraud, to promulge lying legends, to commemorate 
their silly processions, and to sanctify drunkenness and debauch- 
ery in honor of the idol for the day. They endanger social 
order, and interrupt national prosperity by the encouragement 
which they give to indolence; by the mischievous squandermg 
of money which they require ; and by the dissipation and licen- 
tiousness which are inseparable from them. In truth, the 
Popish carnavals of every name and species, and in all places, 
are the exactly continued counterparts of the ancient Pagan 
festivals. The antiquated Lupercalia and feasts of Flora were 
not in any one point more inordinately criminal and extrava- 
gantly impure, than the modern masquerades at Rome and Ve- 
nice during their Carnavals; and no brothels in the world equal 
in beastly practices, male and female convents. 

The author of " Lettres Juives," in his sixty-fifth letter, nar- 
rates of the pontifical dominions and the neighboring countries 
in Italy, where Popery is exhibited in its perfection ; that the 
*' Nunneries as well as streets and private houses are transformed 
into masquerading theatres. Nuns roam about the streets dis- 
guised in fantastic dresses and in male garments, even of the 
Ecclesiastics; while the Monks and Priests appear, not only as 
buffoons, and in every other theatrical garb ; but also even as 
women and nuns. All public and private business is suspend- 
ed; and all virtue, decorum, and common sense are banished." 

Travellers assure us, that formerly the Turks, who visited the 
Popish countries, ascribed the Carnavals to a periodical mania, 
which returned annually soon after the New Year ; and as the 
outrageous profligacy ceased at the beginning of Lent, as it is 
superstitiously denominated ; they supposed, that the cure of that 
temporary delirium was effected by the application of the ashes at 
the period, which from that ceremony is called Ash Wednesday. 

" The institution of Lent is pretended to be founded upon our 
Savior's fast of forty days in the wilderness ; as if frail mortals 
in all things could imitate the Son of God ! They might as 
27 



S14 *'ALL DECEIVABLENESS 

well attempt to walk upon the sea. Besides the omnipotent 
Savior endured that fast but once — ^the Apostles never. The 
impossibility of man's long suffering hunger, without doubt is 
the grand cause for its enforcement by the Romish Priesthood. 
Immense sums of money are obtained for dispensations to break 
the canon : and all men may transmute beef, mutton, venison, 
and poultry, into fish, who will pay the demand of the Confessor 
for the privilege of gormandizing. In fact, the whole system 
of keeping Lent, is nothing more than a scheme of ecclesiastical 
roguery, to enrich and feed the Popish Priests, by starving the 
people ; or making them pay the stipulated price for satisfying 
the cravings of nature- It is also not a little memorable, that in 
the reign of Charles II. king of Britain; the nominal Protestant, 
Archbishop Sheldon, who was the grand artificer of the English 
black Bartholomew's day in 1662, actually granted to Protest- 
ants, licences to eat flesh in Lent, which were obtained upon ap- 
plication for the prescribed fees. — Ind. Whig ; 34. 

■7. Popish mummeri/ substituted for evangelical holhiess. — 
The Romish superstitious ceremonial extirpates all goodness and 
morality, and exchanges spiritual devotion for exterior pageantry. 
Mummery in honor of the Virgin Mary, the Papists say, will 
infallibly secure them from final torment. They teach, that to 
possess a relic is superior to gospel sanctity ; and that a drop of 
blessed water will ever cleanse from all sins. Well therefore 
has it unanswerably been asked — " If water salted by a Roman 
Priest can purify and meeten the soul for heaven, what is the 
use of a holy life ?" 

Popery consists of an endless train of senseless, but showy 
and sanctimonious observances ; fasts, festivals, mutterings in an 
unknown tongue, crossings, counting of beads, grimaces, and 
idolatrous adoration of images ; which so bewitch and intoxicate 
the people, that they think themselves very devout and holy, be- 
cause they are beyond all measure childish and superstitious. — 
Tillotso7i. 

This statement is confirmed by Alexander de Salo, who in 
his *' Methode pour servir et honorer la Verge Marie," fhus 



315 

oracularly announces the genuine Romanism respecting the lit- 
tle estimate which the Papists have for morality, when contrasted 
with the insuperable necessity of a constant and strict compliance 
with their idolatrous ritual. That author affirms — " None oi 
those who live and die servants of the Virgin Mary can be 
damned ; for many of them w^ho were abandoned to wickedness 
have obtained mercy and eternal life. It was revealed to a monk, 
that the Virgin hath such authority in heaven, that she obtains 
of her son, whatever she demands for her favorites, even so far 
as to revoke the sentences of their condemnation. Paul de Cas- 
tro says, that as a Cardinal, by only putting his hat upon the 
head of a criminal going to execution, delivers him from punish- 
ment ; much more hath the Mother of God power to liberate 
a miserable sinner, whom the greatness of his iniquity hath 
bound over to eternal w^o." 

Anselm. narrates as a genuine fact, and it is just as infallibly 
true as any other part of Popery ; " that one morning a noto- 
rious thief entered the cottage of a poor widow with an inten- 
tion to rob her ; but judging her not worth enough for his trouble, 
he thus familiarly accosted her. ' Have you breakfasted yet V 
*I breakfast?' she replied; 'God forbid that I should violate my 
vow to fast every Saturday in the year.' — ' Every Saturday, and 
why that V he asked. ' Because,' answered the woman, ' I heard 
from a famous preacher, that whoever fasts on Saturday in honor 
of our Lady cannot die without confession.' The thief upon 
that information feeling penitence, knelt down and swore to the 
Clueen of Angels, that he would also fast every Saturday for 
her sake; and thenceforth inviolably kept his promise. But as 
he still continued his robberies, he was eventually surprised by 
some travellers, who severed his head from his body. His exe- 
cutioners were instantly surprised to hear the head cry out — 
* Confession, masters, I beg at least that I may have confession.' 
The affrighted man-slayers ran to the next village to inform the 
Curate, who immediately went to the place with a multitude of 
the people to witness that prodigy ; and having joined the head 
of the highwayman to his body, according to his desire, gave 



316 *ALL DECEIVABLENESS OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS." 

him confession. After which, the penitent, having thanked the 
Priest for his absolution, said with a loud and distinct voice — 
* Masters, I never performed any good in all my lifetime, except 
my having fasted every Saturday in honor of the Mother of God. 
At the very moment I received the deadly blow, a frightful troop 
of devils surrounded me to seize my soul ; but the blessed Vir- 
gin came to my aid, and drew them far from me by her divine 
presence, and would not suffer my soul to leave my body till I 
should be sufficiently contrite, and make confession of my sins. 
Having also entreated the attendants to pray for him, he passed 
from this world into the state of happiness and glory." — Salo^ 
Methode, &c. 

The work from which the preceding dogmas and narrativ<d 
are extracted, is one of the most esteemed productions among the 
host of Roman legendary writers. It was published as oracu- 
lar, and authorized in usual form by the pretended unerring ap- 
probation of the chiefs of the Papal Hierarchy. It is precisely 
congenial with the sanction given to the "Lives of the Saints 
by Aloysius ;" and from the above single fact, the inference is 
undeniable, that the Papists do substitute idolatrous forms of 
worship, for evangelical devotion and that "holiness without 
which no man shall see the Lord" — and therefore we may be 
assured, that the definition of the Apostle Paul is infallibly cor- 
rect; — Popery is "the working Satan;" 2 Thessalonians 2: 8, 
10, 12; and that Papists not believing " the truth and having 
pleasure in unrighteousness" do not repent of "their murders, 
nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts;" 
Revelation 9 : 21 ; and 17: 2, 4, 6; because they "have been 
made drunk by the golden cup full of the wine of filthiness and 
abominations" with which " Mystery, Babylon the Great, the 
Mother of Harlots," hath deceived them "who perish; because 
they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." 



NOTES. 



i. M ONACHISM. 

The Reformation has promoted the internal security and prosperity of 
nations, by abolishing various customs and institutions which corrupted 
their morals and impoverished their resources. Multitudes of the primi- 
tive Christians escaped from persecution into solitary and uninhabited 
places, where their enthusiasm was inflamed to an extraordinary degree 
by the gloom of the surrounding desert. Fanaticism having contihued 
the unnatural practice of leaving society, even after the cause which had 
given birth to it had ceased, the monastic life began to assume a regular 
form. Edifices were reared and appropriated for that purpose ; rules 
were prescribed for the observance of their inhabitants ; and eminent for 
piety was the individual esteemed, who took up his final retreat in one 
of those solitary mansions. That was the origin of monastic institu- 
tions; and one of the most surprising subjects that can engage our con- 
templation, is the extent to which they increased. A system that derived 
its existence from an obscure individual, who possessed no influence save 
what his fervid superstition conferred upon him, extending its ramifica- 
tions over one kingdom after another, and over one region after another, 
till it could boast of establishments over half the globe — numbering 
among its members, statesmen, kings, and emperors, and actually grasp- 
ing a great part of the wealth of the nations in which it prevailed — is 
one of the most astonishing scenes that history unfolds. 

The monastic life is unnatural, — for it is in direct opposition to an ori- 
ginal principle of the human mind, by which our species are connected 
among themselves — the desire of society; nor is there a more striking 
phenomenon in the history of mankind than this — that a wild enthusiasm 
should acquire entire superiority over an afifection to which men in every 
region in the world do homage. The professed and primary object of 
monastic institutions is preposterous. Little can be said for the ration- 
ality of minds which could suppose that the duties we owe to the God 
who made us, may be better performed amid the gloom of the desert, 
and the dreariness of the cell, than in the scenes of social life ! 

But, alihough it were granted that the object of monastic institutions 
is not irrational, their existence, from the very hour of their commence- 
ment, was one continued crime against God, and against human society, 
increasing every hour in magnitude and atrocity. Man is not formed 
for himself alone. Dependent on his fellows, his very circumstances 
point out his destination. He is a member of society, and there are du- 
27* 



SIS MONACHISM. 

ties v/hicli we owe to society of as much importance in their own place, 
as those that are more immediately required of him by his Creator. 
What estimate, then, must we form of the conduct of him who turns 
away with utter contempt from all those offices of social duty, and burst- 
ing through all the strong and endearing ties by which he is connected 
with the members of the same great family, resolves to live "a solitary 
man." 

The aggregate of injury which, in the withdrawment of its mem- 
bers, was inflicted on society by those institutions, during the long period 
of twelve centuries, cannot be counterbalanced. If the beings devoted 
to monachism, be estimated only at the permanent average of one million^ 
forty generations passed away in that period, and a total is presented to 
us triple the population of the United States, of our fellow creatures, to 
whose exertions in her service, society had a right of which she could 
not justly be deprived, snatched away from her, and with all those powers 
and faculties, which, under a kindlier influence, might have been her 
ornament and delight, buried in the lone desert ! The number of monks 
and nuns throughout Christendom, doubtless, was far greater than that 
which we have supposed. The number in France, at the end of the 
seventeenth century — a period, posterior to the Reformation, when the 
ranks of monastics were greatly thinned, was more than two hundred 
thousand! England, at the time of the suppression of the monasteries 
by Henry VIIL, contained fifty thousand: and one of the pontifis was 
accustomed to boast, that he had forty-four thousand monasteries at his 
command! 

Who can tell, amid all that prodigious overthrow of mind, how many 
mighty spirits were crushed in their opening energies ? How many in- 
dividuals were condemned to live in vain, through whose enterprising 
efforts light might have been shed on the paths of literature, or on the 
truths of religion ! Who can tell whether the combined exertions of 
many of those lost myriads might not have prevented the disastrous 
reign of darkness that ensued, and rendered the Reformation unneces- 
sary ] Who can doubt, that in all that inconceivable multitude, there 
were many who would have occupied important stations in society ; — 
many who would have proved the centre of domestic charities, the lovers 
of freedom, the friends and benefactors of their species 1 What can 
redeem, from the charge of atrocious guilt, the system which occasioned 
such gigantic ruin of intellectual, moral, and physical powers'? 

This, however, does not unfold all the injury done to society by monas- 
tic institutions, nor is it that view of it in which their criminality ap- 
pears invested with its highest aggravation. It is dreadful to deprive 
society of the benevolent exertions of millions of her members; but it is 
diabolical to set all those millions in hostility against themselves. From 



MONACHISM. 319 

the principles on which those institutions were established, and the con- 
duct which characterized their members, nations were arrayed against 
their own prosperity and peace — for they were instituted upon entire 
devotedness to the court of Rome, and absolute independence on the civil 
power. The exemption of such vast numbers of ecclesiastical persons 
from all subjection to the secular authorities, was utterly at variance 
with national security ; yet that exemption was claimed for them, and 
during many ages afforded ground of contention and warfare in almost 
every nation of Europe. Even after the Reformation had taken place, 
the continuation of the system was attempted ; and in the articles de- 
creed by the Council of Trent, for the reformation of princes and civil 
magistrates — which were a collection and confirmation of the decrees of 
former councils — we may read at once a description of the ten kingdoms 
of the Beast previous to the Reformation, and of the state in which, if 
Papal influence had been sufficiently powerful, it would still have 
remained. The decrees of that Council enact : — " That persons ecclesi- 
astical, even though their clerical title should be doubtful, and though 
they themselves should consent, under any pretext, cannot be judged in 
a secular judicatory. Even in cases of notorious assassination, their 
prosecution must be preceded by a declaration of the bishop of the dio- 
cese. That in causes spiritual, matrimonial, those of heresy, tythes, &c. 
civil, criminal, mixed, belonging to the ecclesiastical court, as v/ell over 
persons as over goods, the temporal judge cannot intermeddle ; and those 
who shall recur to the civil power, shall be excommunicated. Secular 
men cannot constitute judges in causes ecclesiastical. A clergyman, who 
shall accept ofiice from a layman, shall be suspended from orders, be 
deprived of his benefice, and be incapacitated. No king or emperor can 
make edicts, relating to causes or persons ecclesiastical, or intermeddle 
with their jurisdiction, or eve;i with the Inquisition, but are obliged to 
lend their arm to the ecclesiastical judges. Ecclesiastics shall not be con- 
strained to pay taxes, excise, &c., not even under the name of free gifts, 
or loans, either for patrimonial goods, or the goods of the church. 
Princes and magistrates shall not quarter their officers, &c. on the 
houses or monasteries of ecclesiastics, nor draw thence aught for victuals, 
or passage-money, &c. All princes were admonished to have in venera- 
tion the things which are of ecclesiastical right, as pertaining to God, 
and not to allow others herein to offend, renewing all the constitutions 
of sovereign pontiffs and the canons, in favor of ecclesiastical immuni- 
ties, and commanding, under pain of anathema, that neither directly or 
indirectly, under any pretence, aught be enacted or executed against 
ecclesiastical persons, or goods, or against their liberty ; any privilege 
or immemorial exception to the contrary notwithstanding,"— iWe7w/Mwi*5 
History of the CmmcU of Treni. 



320 MONACHISM. 

Such are the privileges which, not the monks only, but all the order3 
of the clergy, insulted the powers of Europe by arrogating to themselves, 
and in asserting which, they frequently threw whole kingdoms into con- 
fusion. " Those articles imply a total independence of the ecclesiastic 
on the secular powers, inasmuch as the latter could use no coercive 
measures, either for preventing the commission of crimes by the former, 
or for punishing them when committed — could not, even for the payment 
of civil debts, or discharge of lawful obligations, aifect the clergy, either 
in person or property, moveable or immoveable ; and could exact no aid 
from them for the exigencies of the state, however urgent. The inde- 
pendence was solely on the side of the clergy, for the laity could not, by 
their civil sanctions, affect the clergy without their own concurrence 
but the clergy, both by their civil and by their religious sanctions, could 
affect the laity, and in spite of their opposition, could bring the most 
obstinate to their terms. The civil judge could not compel a clergy- 
man to appear before his tribunal ; but the ecclesiastical judge could and 
did daily compel laymen to appear before him. In all disputes between 
individuals, the clerical only could decide. Though the kinds of power,/ 
in the different orders, were commonly distinguished into temporal and • 
spiritual, the greater part of the power of the ecclesiastics was strictly^ 
temporal. Matters spiritual are those only of faith and manners ; as 
influencing opinion, wounding charity, or raising scandal. Whereas, 
under the general term spiritual, they included all the important part of 
civil matters also, affairs matrimonial and testamentary, questions of 
legitimacy and succession, covenants and conventions, and wherever the' 
interposition of an oath was customary. They were also the sole arbiters' 
of the rights avowedly civil of the church and churchmen, and in every 
thing wherein those had, in common with laymen, any share or con- 
cern." The Popish clergy generally, and especially the monastic 
orders, were " a spiritual army, dispersed throughout Europe, of which 
all the movements and operations could be directed by one hand, and 
conducted upon one uniform plan. The monks of each particular coun- 
try were a particular detachment of that army, of which the operations 
could easily be supported and seconded by all the other detachments, 
quartered in the different countries round about. Each detachment was 
not only independent of the sovereign of the country in which it was 
quartered, and by which it was maintained, but dependent on a foreign 
sovereign, who could at any time turn its arm.s against that particular 
country, and support them by the power of all the other detachments." 

Monastic institutions were injurious to the states of Europe, for they 
absorbed a vast portion of national wealth. They were supported in 
affluence and splendor, at the expense of the very community whose 
claims on their services they had spurned j and by the delusions which 



MONACHISM. 321 

Popery had spread over the world, they drew into their possession im- 
mense riches, the greater part of which, as to any advantage resulting 
from it to the state, became from that moment utterly dead. " In Eng- 
land the prodigious increase of the riches of the church had long been 
the subject of complaint, as a matter of the utmost prejudice to the state. 
The barons inserted a clause in the great charter, which expressly pro- 
hibited any one to alienate his lands to the church ; but that prohibition 
had no effect. The church acquired estates, which were never after- 
wards alienated. In proportion as their revenues increased, the public 
were impoverished; and if their rapacity had been continued, England 
would have been a nation of monasteries and masshouses. Edward I., 
tlierefore, enacted a law effectually to prevent the continuance of that 
evil, by prohibiting any one to dispose of his estates, without the king's 
consent, to societies which never die; the famous statute of Mortmain." 
In spite of all those precautions, monachism so prevailed, that six hun- 
dred and forty-five convents were suppressed by Henry VIII. at the Re- 
formation, the annual revenues of which were equivalent to thirty mil- 
lions of dollars. 

In Sweden the wealth of the church was of more value than all the 
other property in the kingdom. In Cambresis, a province of the Nether- 
lands, the possessions of the ecclesiastics were, to those of the whole laity, 
as fourteen to three ! "At every step of our progress in France, appear 
rich monasteries and magnificent abbeys. Before the revolution of 1789, 
oTie half of the property of that kingdom was in the hands of the priests 
and the monks. That fact is still more sensibly true of Spain, Italy, 
Flanders, and Germany." Scotland sacrificed largely at the shrine of 
monastic folly. One of her princes, David, in the twelfth century, 
founded and endowed no fewer than tiaelve magnificent fabrics, conse- 
crated to the purposes of monachism, for which the church honored him 
with the insertion of his name in her calendar of demon saints to be 
worshipped. 

But the enormous revenues which they derived from their lands, and 
their church livings, were not the only sources of wealth to the monas- 
teries. Sums exceeding conception were filched from the sale of relics, 
and the voluntary ofierings of superstitious devotees. Perpetually did 
the monks exhibit a vast variety of relics, whose virtues were marvel- 
lously adapted to all the exigencies of human life. There were four 
arms of Andrew ; dozens of Jeremiah's teeth ; parings of Edmund's 
toes; some of the coals that roasted Laurence; and the girdle of the 
Virgin Mary was shown in eleven places, with two or three heads of 
Saint Ursula, some of Peter's buttons, and many rags of the muslin and 
the lace of female saints ! A thousand marvellous properties Were attri- 
buted to those fraudful relics. They affirmed, that they had power to 



322 MONACHISM. 

fortify against temptation, to infuse and strengthen grace, to drive away 
the devil and all evil spirits, to allay winds and tempests, to purify the 
air, to secure from thunder and lightning, to arrest the progress of con- 
tagion, and to heal all diseases ! Indeed, it was much more difficult to 
tell what they could not, than what they could do ! To be permitted to 
touch, or even to see those hallowed things, w^as a privilege for which 
the people had to pay j but the possession of them was to be obtained only 
at a very great price; and the virtue by which they were distinguished, 
was also proportioned to the rate at which they had been procured.- In 
addition to the immense sums received for their relics, the monasteries 
were ever attesting some new miracle, far the purpose of attracting the 
unhealthy, the penitent, and the pilgrim ; all of whom were urged to 
leave an offering behind them to the wonder-working saint. The wealth 
of which, by these means, the monks became possessed, was enormous. 
The offerings at the shrine of Thomas Becket amounted, in one year^ to 
nine hundred and fifty-four pounds, — a sum equivalent to fifty thousand 
dollars ; and the gold taken from the shrine, at the time of the demoli- 
tion of the monasteries, " filled two chests, which eight strong men could 
hardly carry. The jewels, the plate, the furniture, and other goods, 
which belonged to all the abbeys and convents, amounted to a prodigious 
sum, of which no computation can be made. The vestments were of 
cloth of gold, silk, and velvet, richly embroidered ; and the crucifixes, 
images, candlesticks, and other utensils and ornaments of their churches, 
all were of silver and gold." 

What was the mighty benefit, which in return for all the splendid gifts 
they received, the monastics conferred on their devotees'? Nothing more 
than a promise that all the influence which the monks possessed in 
heaven should be exerted in behalf of their souls, and those of their rela- 
tives ! What imposition can be too gross, for deceiving an ignorant and 
superstitious people 1 - The sanctity of the recluses consisted wholly m 
some ridiculous singularity of garb ; yet was the world so much infatu- 
ated by their appearance, that liberality to them — even to the beggaring 
of their own children — was regarded as the most direct path to heaven; 
nor, it was craftily promulged, could immortal happiness be more effect- 
ually secured, than by giving the luxuries of life to those who had bound 
themselves to live in abstinence, and by enriching those who had sworn, 
to live for ever poor ! Thus were the people deluded, as the pretensions 
of the monastics to poverty and austere piety were mere cant; for amid 
all the gloom, and all the affected rigidity of their character and their 
devotions, they never manifested any reluctance to encumber themselves 
with the riches that perish ; and to barter for the carnal things of this 
world, the spiritual commodities of the world to come. 

But the mere absorption of property and of wealth was not all the 



MONACHISM. 323 

positive evil wilh which the monastic institutions were chargeable. 
T/tatyin process of time, would have effected the ruin of society; and 
but for the Reformation, Europe would now have become a region of 
monasteries and of monks. It is the moral influence which they exerted, 
that renders them pre-eminently infamous, and throws over their guilt 
its deepest and darkest shade of atrocity. Morality constitutes the high- 
est glory of a nation ; when that is gone, its worth is departed ; and 
though it may continue to boast of trade, and riches, and power, it is an 
abomination in the earth. Those institutions naturally tended, and did 
greatly contribute, to ruin the moral character of every country in which 
they prevailed. There is not one individual of our species, on whose 
mind seclusion from society would not produce the most baneful effects : 
for it would either give to his character the complexion of a rigid, unso- 
cial misanthrope ; or inspire him with all the fervor of fanatical frenzy. 
Men of the strongest mental powers, improved by education, have been 
unable to withstand its influence. It is the unavoidable effect of a mon- 
astic education, to contract and fetter the human mind. The attachment 
of a monk to the interest of his order, which is incompatible with that of 
other citizens, and the habit of implicit obedience to the will of a supe- 
rior, with the frequent return of the wearisome and frivolous duties of 
the cloister, debase his faculties, and extinguish all generosity of senti- 
ment and spirit. The effect of monastic seclusion on the female mind, 
has been singular. In a convent of nuns in France, a strange impulse 
seized one of the sisterhood to mew like a cat, which soon communicsb- 
ted itself to the rest,, and became general throughout the convent, till, at 
last, they all joined, at stated periods, in the practice of mewing, and con- 
tinued it for several hours! In the fifteenth century, one of the nuns in 
a German convent was seized with a strange propensity to bite all her 
companions; and that disposition spread among them, till all of them 
were infected with the same fury. 

But the effect which monachism has produced on the passions, man- 
kind have had most cause to deplore. Men may think to escape the 
power of passion, by escaping from the view of those objects by which 
it was excited; but the thought is vain. The calm which seems to ac- 
company the mind in its retreat, is deceitful. The passions are secretly 
at work within the heart. The imagination is continually heaping fuel 
on the latent fire ; and at length the laboring desire bursts forth, and 
glows with volcanic heat and fury. The man may change his habita- 
tion, but the same passions and inclinations lodge within him; and 
though they appear to be undisturbed and inactive, they are silently iiv- 
fluencing all the propensities of his heart. Even minds under the influ- 
ence of virtuous principle cannot stem the impetuous torrent ; and as 
for those of an opposite description, they must be overcome. The celi- 



324 MONACHISM. 

bawy, the poverty, and the self-tormenting punishments to which the advo- 
cates of monachism pretended to dedicate themselves, fostered their 
pride, their ambition, and their sensual inclinations; and so quickly was 
the semblance of sanctity banished from their habitations, that in the 
ninth century, the most strenuous efforts of Charlemagne were inadequate 
to repress the disorders with which they were pervaded. Ignorance, 
arrogance, and luxury, were the prominent features in the character of 
all orders of the Papal hierarchy. " Worldly ambition, gross voluptuous- 
ness, and grosser ignorance, characterized their various ranks; and the 
open sale of benefices placed them in the hands of the basest of men." 

The history of the monks and nuns exhibits, that their hearts were 
corrupted with the w^orst passions that disgrace humanity, and the disci- 
pline of the convent was not productive of a single virtue. Prelates ex- 
ceeded the inferior priests in every kind of profligacy, as much as in 
opulence and power; and of course, their superintending authority was 
not exerted to lessen or restrain the prevalence of those vices, which 
their evil example contributed so largely to increase. 

Boccace, in his witty and ingenious tales, very severely satirized the 
licentiousness and immorality which prevailed during his time in the 
Italian monasteries ; and exposed the scandalous lives and vices of 
the monks, nuns, and other orders of the Papal ecclesiastics. Contem- 
porary historians also delivered the most disgusting accounts of their in- 
temperance and debauchery. The frailty of the female monastics was 
an article of regular taxation ; and the Pope filled his coffers with the 
price of their impurities. The frail nun, whether she was immured 
within a convent, or resided without its walls, might redeem her lost 
honor, and be reinstated in her former dignity and virtue, for a few 
ducats. That scandalous traffic soon destroyed all sense of morality, 
and heightened the hue of vice. Ambrosius of Canadoli, a prelate of 
extraordinary virtue, visited various convents in his diocese; but on in- 
specting their proceedings, he found no traces even of decency remain- 
ing in any one of them ; nor was he able to infuse the smallest particle 
of decorum into the degenerated minds of the sisterhood. The reform 
of the nunneries was the first step that distinguished the government of 
Pope Sixtus IV., at the close of the sixteenth century. The Genoese 
convents, where the nuns lived in open defiance of all the rules of natu- 
ral modesty, and scoffed at religion, were the first objects of his attention. 
The orations which Bossus publicly uttered from the pulpit, and the pri- 
vate lectures and exhortations which he delivered to the nuns from the 
confessional chair, breathed, in the most impressive manner, the true 
spirit of Christian purity ; but his glowing representations of the bright 
beauties of virtue, and the dark deformities of vice, made little impres- 
sion upon their corrupted hearts. Despising the open calumnies of the 
envious, and the secret hosiilities of the guiliyj he proceeded, in spite 0/ 



MONACHISM. 325 

all discouragement and opposition, in his highly honorable pursuit j and 
at length, by his wisdom and assiduity, beheld the fairest prospects oi 
success daily opening to his view. The rays of hope however had 
scarcely beamed upon his endeavors, when they were immediately over- 
clouded by disappointment. The arm of magistracy, which he had 
called upon to aid the accomplishment of his design, was enervated by 
venality; for the incorrigible objects of his solicitude having freed 
themselves by bribery from the terror of the civil power, contemned 
the reformer's denunciations of eternal vengeance hereafter, and relap- 
sed into their former licentiousness and depravity. Among the great 
number of nuns who inhabited those guilty convents, a few were con- 
verted by the force of his eloquent remonstrances, and became after- 
wards exemplary in their lives, but the rest abandoned themselves to 
their impious courses; and though more vigorous methods were in a 
short time adopted against those refractory monastics, they set all 
attempts to reform them at defiance. The modes in which their vices 
were indulged have changed with the character of the age; and as 
manners grew more refined, the gross and shameful indulgences of the 
monks and nuns have been changed into a more elegant and decent style 
of profligacy. Fashion has rendered them more prudent and reserved 
in their intrigues, but their passions are not less vicious, nor their dispo- 
sitions less corrupt. 

Such is the record of monastic profligacy and corruption ; and when 
we think how the monks were regarded by the people with profoundest 
reverence, and, moreover, with what swarms of them Europe was filled 
— Friars, white, black, and gray ; canons regular, and of Anthony ; Car- 
melites, Carthusians, Cordeliers, Dominicans, Franciscans Conventual 
and Observantines, Jacobins, Remonstratensians, Monks of Tyronne 
and of Vallis Caulium, Hospitallers, or Knights of John of Jerusalem; 
Nuns of Ursula, Austin, Clare, Scholastica, Catherine of Sienna; with 
Canonesses of various clans, — we cannot entertain a doubt, that the con- 
tagion of their example operated with most debasing and corrupting 
effect upon the character of mankind. "What must have been the condi- 
tion of morality, when its professed teachers were so immoral 1 What, 
in the view of the God of truth and purity, must be the turpitude of that 
system, or of that widely extended institution, which, for more than a 
thousand years, spread its unhallowed influence over so great a portion 
of the world, and triumphed in the overthrow of all that is virtuous and 
noble in the character of man 1 The Reformation, in effecting the over- 
throw of the monastic system, has promoted, in no ordinary degree, the 
prosperity of every state in which it has exemplified its beneficent opera- 
tions. — Mackray^s Effect of the Reformation on Civil Society, — Secrets of 
Nunneries Disclosed by Scipio de Ricci, 

28 



326 BABYLONIAN FESTIVALS. 



II. BABYLONIAN FESTIVALS. 

The Reformation has done important and lasting service to the re- 
sources and the morals of the states of Europe; by the diminution, and 
the abolition which it effected of the vast number of festivals and 
holidays that were formerly observed. "The Sabbath, considering it 
only under a political point of view, is an admirable institution. But by 
multiplying those days of inactivity, that which was established for the 
advantage of individuals and societies has been converted into a calamity 
for them ! What strange infatuation ! The powers intrusted with 
the maintenance and happiness of empires, have patiently suffered a 
foreign priest to diminish that labor, which alone could fertilize them. 
This inconceivable disorder still continues in the south of Europe, and 
is one of the greatest obstacles to the increase of all subsistence, and of 
its population." 

Much as the number of those festivals has been abridged, even in 
Popish countries, in consequence of the Reformation, it is still very 
considerable, and by the suspension of labor that takes place on those 
days among all persons engaged in trade, and manufactures, and agri- 
culture, there is injury done to the national wealth of no small magnitude ; 
while the voluptuousness and riot that characterize their observance, do 
incredible injury to the national morality. If the influence of those 
holidays is so pernicious in the nineteenth century, when their number 
has been so much diminished, and their power so much repressed, what 
must have been their curse anterior to the Reformation, when their 
number was vastly greater,- and when their baleful effects were ex- 
perienced in every sphere of life, and in every department of human 
society'? The saints, to whose memories certain days had been appro- 
priated, had multiplied so exceedingly that their commemoration occu- 
pied a great portion of the year. " The Christian Martyrology became 
as voluminous as the Pagan mythology. In the time of Eusebius, the 
saintly names to be commemorated, amounted to more than five thousand 
for every day of the year ! No wonder that those w^ho attempted to 
compile the lives and acts of the saints, in later times, should have 
found it such a long and laborious task, that it required several years 
to accomplish it. The collection begun last century amounted to four- 
teen volumes folio; only the saints of the first four months of the year! 
To shorten the labor, and to abridge the ceremonial of commemoration, 
they associated a number of them into fellowship, and made one day 
serve for several of them ; so that, on some busy days, Papists could pay 
their compliments to thousands at once, whereby they were canonically 



, ^'iH<t>?^^. 



BABYLONIAN FESTIVALS. 327 

exempted from the drudgery of daily altendance upon them. Thus, ou 
Innocents' day, they commemorated the Babes of Bethlehem, an indefinite 
number. On the ninth of March, the Forty Martyrs of Sebastes. 
Another was consecrated to Ursula, and her eleven thousand virgins. 
On another they discharged their homage to myriads of the heavenly 
host, whose number amounts to thousands of thousands, and ten thou- 
sand times ten thousand, which is the work of the festival of 'Michael, 
and all angels;' w^hose names, virtues, and services, taken one by one, it 
would have been difficult particularly to record. A similar universal 
commemoration they appointed for the dead ; and lest any of them 
should have been forgotten and overlooked in the crowd, the first of 
November was consecrated to perpetuity, in honor of ^ All Saints* 
Notwithstanding this expeditious way of paying the immense accumu- 
lating debts which they acknowledged to be due, there still remained 
abundance of particular accounts to clear, on particular marked days, 
to give sufiicient employment both to priests and laity, if they proposed to 
solemnize the whole round of feasts, whether double, semi-double, or 
simple, general, national, provincial, or local, with that degree of strict- 
ness which they pretended was necessary. So mad did they become on 
their superstition, as not only to dedicate holidays to God, to Christ, to 
angels, to the virgin, to the apostles and saints, real or supposed, but also 
to inanimate objects, or particular acts, events or circumstances ; to the 
dedication of churches, anniversaries of consecration of bishops, cele- 
bration of councils, and even to crosses, spears and nails, chains, clothes, 
and beads." 

The festivals of the saints were said to be guarded from secular 
business, not only by the authority of the ecclesiastical and civil powers 
on earth, but also by the vindictive jealousy of the saints in heaven. The 
fierce deities of the Pagan world were not more dreadful in their resent- 
ment against the profaners of their consecrated days, than were the mild 
saints of the Christian world against those by whom theirs were pro- 
faned. A Roman poet assures us that certain royal ladies, having 
ventured to spin on the feast of Bacchus, were for that crime trans- 
formed into bats ! 

Sternness was the prominent character of the Heathen Gods ; and was 
embodied in their actions. But from the saints of a religion whose pro- 
minent feature is love, we naturally expect milder conduct. Alas ! our 
expectations are vain. In the legends of Rome, the saintly character 
was fearfully vindictive and unrelenting. A man who got a shirt made 
on the day of the Assumption of our Lady, found it, when about to put 
it on, oversprinkled with blood ! He had reason to congratulate himself 
that it happened to be the day of Our Lady, for the other saints would 
not have allowed him to escape so easily I A poor wood-feller having 



328 BABYLONIAN 

gone out to cut wood, as he was raising up his axe to give the stroke, 
heard a voice crying, three times, ^' It is my feast, it is not permitted to 
work;" but continuing his work notwiihstanding, both his hands stuck 
fast to the handle of the axe ! But the fate of poor Peter, an ox-driver, 
was still more awful. It happened that inadvertently he greased his 
waggon on the day of Mary Magdalen, and immediately he beheld his 
waggon and oxen consumed by fire from heaven, and was himself 
scorched in a most miserable manner 1 ! 

During ninety-eight days in the year, secular employments were pro- 
hibited, and an interdict was laid on the whole worldly business of soci- 
ety. Abandoning not merely the high-toned purity of Christian morals, 
but even the ordinary decorum which reason dictates as the becoming 
characteristic of human conduct, the people marked the celebration of 
these sacred days with every feature of profligate dissipation. It seemed, 
indeed, as if mankind had retrograded to the times and scenes of antiqui- 
ty; or as if the festivals of the heathen gods, with all the circumstances 
of debauchery that attended them, had been transferred to those who 
were called Christian people ! 

The abuses which were connected with the observance of holidays 
gradually became more flagrant. In the middle of the eighth century, 
a synod in France enacted — " Every bishop shall take care that the peo- 
ple of God make no Pagan feasts or interludes, but that they reject all 
the filthy abominations of the Gentiles, such as the profane offerings fv^ir 
the dead, fortune-tellings, div^inations, and immolated sacrifices, which 
foolish men make near to the churches, after the Pagan manner, in the 
name of holy martyrs and confessors, provoking God and his saints 
to wrath and vengeance : as also, that they diligently inhibit those sacri- 
legious fires, which they call nedfri^ bonfires, and all other observances 
of the Pagans whatever." In the days of Henry I., " it was the custom 
of the people of England to spend their Christmas in plays, masquer- 
ades, and magnificent and costly spectacles, and to addict themselves to 
sensual pleasures, dancing, dicing, and various other games." At the 
time of the meeting of the Council of Constance, the abuses resulting 
frDm the festivals were particularly complained of by some of the lead- 
ing Papists, and the reformation of them was loudly demanded. To 
such a height of impiety had many even of the clergy proceeded, that 
*'they used to spend the whole night of the Nativity of our Lord, and 
great part of the day, in gaming; in the name of Jesus Christ, and in 
the name of the Virgin." 

A most melancholy representation of the wretched state of Christen- 
dom in those times, has been left on record by Nicholas Clemangis.— 
"Every one may perceive with how little devotion the people now cele- 
brate these holidays. Some satisfy themselves with entering into the 



FESTIVALS. 329 

church, and taking there a little consecrated water, or faljing down on 
their knees for a moment, saluting the image of the Virgin Mary, or of 
any saint, or adoring the body of Jesus Christ during the elevation. 
Some go to their houses in the country, others go about their secular 
business : great numbers resort to fairs, which now are never kept but 
on the most eminent festivals. Some are delighted with stage-actors, 
and frequent the theatres ; tennis-ball employs some, and dice very many. 
Festivals are celebrated by the richer sort with great pomp of apparel, 
and magnihcent banquets; but the conscience lies neglected and unpur- 
ged. As to the exterior, all is fair and garnished — the houses and floors 
are cleaned, green boughs are placed at the door, the ground is strewed 
with herbs and flowers ; but the inward man miserabl}^ pines away in its 
iilthiness. With respect to the profane vulgar, as they may fltly be call- 
ed, holidays are not celebrated by them in the temples, nor in their dwell- 
ings, but in taverns and alehouses. They resort thither at sun-rising, and' 
abide there until midnight. They swear, forswear, blaspheme God, and 
curse all his saints. They roar, they wrestle, they wrangle, they sing, they 
rage, they shriek, they make a tumult, and are as mad as bedlamites. 
They strive who shall overcome one another in drinking: and when they 
have glutted themselves sufficiently, "then they rise up to play. How 
shall I relate the vanities of public plays and spectacles on those days^ 
The cross- ways resound with dances; and the villages and streets, and 
indeed the whole city, with the voices of singers, the shouts and clamors 
of dancers, the confused sound of the harp, tabret, and all other musical 
harmonies. Their minds being moved by the blandishments of laughter, 
the glances of the eye, and the engaging sweetness of song and music, they 
become effenainate, wax vain, and warm into luxury and incontinence. 
There youth first discard chastity. The young men and children are 
corrupted, and infected with an impure contagion. They continually 
provoke one another to lewdness, and he that will not follov/ the rest to 
destruction, is accounted a wretched sluggard good-fbr-nothing. What 
heathen acquainted with those sacrilegious festivals, would not believe 
that the floralia of Venus or the feasts of Bacchus were observed, rather 
than any religious solemnities, when he should there behold such un- 
cleanness as was wont to be committed on the festivals of these idols 1 
Neither doth the filthy obscenity only of Bacchus and Venus seem to be 
exercised there, but likewise of Mars and Bellona. For it is now a com- 
mon opinion, that it is an unseemly holiday, which is not distinguished 
with fighting and eflTusion of blood." 

The Popish festivals were injurious, in an extreme degree, to the best 
interests of society; they diminished national resources, and opened 
wide the floodgates of wickedness, to the sweeping away of the very sem- 
blance of morality. Who se^s not, that, in tkis respect, the Reforxnation 
28* 



330 AURICULAR CONFESSION. 

has been aa unspeakable blessing to mankind 1 For wheresoever it 
has obtained, it has abolished those pernicious institutions, and has rid 
the states of the many abominations with which they were attended ; and 
even in Popish lands, where it has scarcely obtained toleration, its auspi- 
cious influence has been so far experienced, that the princes have prescri- 
bed limits to those holiday observances ; which, fostering idleness and 
ev^ery form of dissipation, they perceived to be utterly hostile to the 
prosperity of their dominions. — Mackray^s Effect of the Reformation on 
Civil Society. 



III. AURICULAR CONFESSION. 

The Popish penance is the very master-piece of ^' the mystery of in- 
iquity." It is absolutely impossible, in all ordinary cases, that any per- 
sons can have the lowest principles of Siorality, or the slightest emotions 
of decorum, remaining in their consciences and sensibilities, who attend 
the Romish Confessional. However revolting, it is indispensable to ex- 
hibit the arcana of that diabolical contrivance, by which those "false 
teachers," the Priests of Babylon the Great, " through covetousness, with 
feigned words, make merchandise " of their deluded and pitiable vassals. 
For that purpose, we introduce a series of the leading questions which 
are propounded to the pretended penitents who attend the priestl}^ confes- 
sor to obtain dispensations, indulgences, and absolution. The few ques- 
tions in which is any remaining portion of humanity, however depraved, 
will be translated; the others will be transcribed verbatim from the 
original. 

I. There is an' elementary school-book of the Peruvian language, en- 
titled "Arte, y Vocabulario, Grammar and Spelling-book," by Torres 
'"'Rubio, a Jesuit, published '• Con Licencia de los Superiores; with the 
license of the Superiors." At the end of that book is a short " Confes- 
sionario, or Examination of Conscience." It commences with twenty 
miscellaneous questions. Then follow six queries on the first command- 
ment. The second mandate is obliterated. Upon the third, there is 
eight inquiries ; on the fourth, six ; on the fifth, six ; on the sixth, sixteen ; 
on the eighth, eight; on the ninth, eleven. The seventh and tenth are 
partially compounded and include the ensuing twenty questions. 

" 1. Have you sinned with any woman 1 With how many 1 Married 
or single 1 How often 1—2. Have you sinned with any of your relatives 1 
Of what relationship 1—3. As pecado con Madre, y Hija, o con dosher- 



AURICULAR CONFESSION. 331 

manasl — 4. Have you endeavored to seduce a virgin'?— 5. Was it by 
force or Avith her consent?— 6. Have you encouraged evil thoughts re- 
specting women? — 7. Was it done deliberately?— 8. Have you sung 
wicked songs? — 9. Tuviste entonces mal deseo ?— 10. Has retozado de 
manos? — 11. Tubiste, entonces rnal deseo ? — 12. Jugaste, retocasle con 
casada, o con soltera? — 13. Has fido tercero, o causa paraque alguno 
peccasse?— 14. Cediste o prestaste tu Casa, o carnal — 15. Haste atabia- 
do, y compuesto con intento de que te se aficionassen 7 — 16. Essos de 
quien fuiste tercero, eran casados, o solteros? — 17. Have you paid your 
matrimonial debt, or resisted it and denied your husband 1 — 18. Has us- 
aao del pecado nefando? — 19. Has cometido peccado de bestialidad 1- 
20. Polluisti te ipsum?" 

To comprehend the full enormity of the turpitude comprised in this 
loathsome specimen; it must be remembered that those questions are 
published in the first and only introductory book; and which must neces- 
sarily be used by all the Spaniards who would "learn the language in 
which the Aboriginal Peruvians converse ; and also by all the Peruvians 
who would use the common Spanish terms. 

II. The " Ritual Formulario, e Institucion de Curas, para administrar 
los Santos Sacramentos, &c.; Ritual and Instruction for Priests to admin- 
ister the Sacraments. &c. ; Con licencia; with permission." Beyond all 
dispute; that is the common formulary of the Spanish Roman Priests, 
and consequently is the same book substantially that is used by all the 
Papal Ecclesiastics throughout the world. It was regularly approved t>y 
the Archbishop, Prelates, the Superiors of the Dominicans and Jesuits, 
and the Vicars-general ; and was printed by direction of the civil gov- 
ernment; and by all of them fulsomely eulogized, and most earnestly 
recommended. 

The first eleven pages contain a concise introduction. Sixty-four 
pages are devoted to the Romish Exorcism. Thirteen pages follow re- 
specting Confirmation. Penance occupies three hundred and sixty-two 
pages. Eighty-seven pages include the Eucharist. Extreme Unction 
comprises forty-five pages. Matrimony extends to forty-nine pages, and 
proposes fifiy-two questions for examination prior to the nuptials. 

The illustrations of Penance alone directly affect the principles and 
practice of social morality with the Christian religion ; and among the 
directions for the fulfilment of the ceremony, is the form of absolution in 
these words — "Dominus Noster Jesus Chirstus te absolvat: &c. May 
the Lord Jesus Christ absolve thee !— and by his authority I absolve thee 
from every bond of excommunication, suspension, and interdict, as far 
as I can, and as thou requirest ; and I absolve thee from all thy sins: in 
the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen. The 
passion of the Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the blessed Virgin Mary 



832 AURICULAR 

and of all her saints, whatever of good thou hast done, and of evil thou 
hast borne, be thine for remission of sins, increase of grace, and the re- 
ward of eternal life. Amen." 

The chief portion of the contents of the three hundred and sixty-two 
pages of the volume which are devoted to Penance, comprises a series of 
examinations upon the Decalogue. Upon the first and second command- 
ments are asked one hundred and twenty-eight questions, which inculcate 
every shameless scene of Pagan idolatry. Forty-five queries or rather 
instructions how most compendiously to blaspheme and take the Lord's 
name in vain, are subjoined to the third mandate. Respecting the viola- 
tion of the Lord's day, thirty inquiries are propounded. 

Upon the fifth commandment are eighty-two questions — we extract the 
forty-sixth and fifty-seventh only j but they are leading questions, and 
several others are similar to them. 46. "Antes que te casases con tu 
muger, pecaste con su madre, &c. 1 " Several other female relatives 
are enumerated. 57. *' Gluando tu marido te pide el debito, consientes 
lol &c." 

The sixth command includes one hundred and one queries ; and incul- 
cates in that insidious form the various modes of secret murder, infanti- 
cides, procuring of abortions, and other hideous atrocities, which no per- 
sons but Papists as taught by Romish Priests ever knew or practised. 

To the eighth commandment are appended two hundred and forty- 
seven inquiries, which develop all the most ingenious and successful ma- 
chinations to defraud and rob with impunity. 

Seventy questions are applied to the ninth mandate ; and they teach 
the most artful methods of equivocation, calumny, deception, falsehood, 
covenant-breaking, and perjury, with their cognate crimes. 

On the latter part of the tenth command are proposed seventeen queries. 

The chapter also contains sixty-two miscellaneous inquiries; the* five 
following comprise one whole section. Page 370. 

" 1. As te mirado et cuerpo, y tocado tus verguencas no estando enfer- 
mo, y sm necessidad 7 — 2. Tocaste les carnes, o verguencas de otro 1 o 
consentiste, que te tocassen tus carnes 1 Procuraste ver las verguencas 
de otro IS, Andas con ojos deshonestos, mirando en las calles, o Iglesi- 
as, a las mugeres, o hombres, que encuentras, si son de buen talle, o her- 
mosas ? — 4. Entras, y combidas a otros, o a mugeres, en casa de malas 
mugeres, aunque no sea con intencion de pecar *?— 5. Have you acknow- 
ledged to your Confessor all the sins that you have committed against 
the seventh and tenth commandments of the law of God 1" 

In consequence of the entire omission of the second commandment; 
the third is numbered as the second, and so onward j and the tenth is 
divided into two parts to complete the number ; for the ninth command 
is in these-words, " Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." 



CONFESSION. 333 

Upon the seventh command are proposed one hundred and sixty-one 
questions to boys and men — twenty-four inquiries concerning matrimo- 
nial sins — and fifty-one queries to girls and women. 

1. To Mm,— Cluestio^ 1. "Are you married or single'? — 2. Are you 
a whoremonger'? — 3. With how many prostitutes do you associate, or 
keep 1—4.. Since your last confession, with how many females have you 
sinned against God? — 5, 6, 7. That question is applied to wives, virgins, 
and unmarried woman? — 8, 9. With how many of your own relatives, 
or those of your wife, have you sinned ? — 10 to 20. These enumerate all 
the nearest relatives by blood. — 21 to 28. These inquiries include the 
minute circumstances attending the specified crimes. — 29. Have you de- 
filed any virgin or virgins?— 30 to 35. Those questions explore the man- 
ner and effects of seduction. — 36 and 37. Inquiries respecting the frequent 
commission of adultery. — 38 and 39. Those queries advert to illicit car- 
nal intercourse with the wife before matrimony. — 40 to 48. Cluestions 
concerning the procuring of concubines under deceitful promises of mar- 
riage, with various accompanying wickedness. — 49 to 54. Inquiries re- 
specting criminal associations with various collateral relatives. — 55. 
" Have you given any woman stimulating drink that she might sin with 
you?" 

56. "As pecado con muger en la Iglesia, o as derramado semiente en la 
Iglesia, o as besado, o abracado, o palpado a alguna muger en estos luga- 
res ? — 57. As abracado, o besado, o tocado los pechos, o otras partes, o las 
verguencas de alguna muger, tomando deleite en esto? o as retocado a 
alguna muger?— 58. How often ?— 59. As metido losdedosalgunasvezes 
en sus verguencas? o as corrotnpido a alguna donzella con los dedosT' 
The sixtieth query is most disgustingly explanatory of the former in ten 
different applications. 

Cluestions 61 to 75 unfold the various modes of pandering to the licen- 
tiousness of relatives and other companions. From the seventy-sixth to 
the ninety-sixth questions, a great variety of methods to engage in lewd- 
ness, and to entice females of all ages and conditions to sensual indul- 
gences, is fully explained. The inquiries from 97 to 113 comprise the 
crime of solitary lewdness. From 114 to 117 the queries advert to the 
sin against nature. 

Gluestion 118. "As pecado con tu muger, o con otra qualquiera, fuer 
a del vaso natural o per otra parte ?— 119 and 120 are explanatory.— 121. 
" As pecado con algun animal, oveja, perra, cabra, gallina, burra, mula, 
gata, pato, o con alguna oveja de la lierra ? 1" si es muger ^ pregunten le : 
As pecado con algun perro^ o con otro qualquier animal ? — 122, 123, 124, 
and 125 are explanatory. 

The questions from 126 to 133 concern the violation of the Romish 
spiritual relationships by criminal intercourse. — From 134 to 161, is a 



I 



334 AURICULAR 

series of miscellaneous inquiries which combine every horrible abomina- 
tion, both personal and social. They are so inordinately nefarious and 
overflowing with diabolical turpitude, that not one of them, except the 
last, is fit for perusal in any language. 161. *' How many men or women 
hast thou thus betrayed 1 " 

2. Sins by married persons against the seventh commandment. — 162. " Do 
you pay your debt to your wife or husband 7" — The questions from 163 
to 168 are revolting to the extreme. 165. " Guardas el orden, y vaso natu- 
ral con tu mugerl — 169. " Estando con tu muger en el acto, as puesto el 
pensamiento deliberadamente, en otro muger'? o as dormido con tu mu- 
ger pensando que es muger de otrol" — 170. "How often?" — 171. 
" What persons 1 " That query includes a lengthened enumeration. — 
172. " Estando en el acto con tu marido, as tenido el pensamiento, en al- 
gun hombre'?" — 173. This question to the wife is far more gross than 
171, that to the husband. — 174 to 178 are obscene to the depth of contami- 
nation.— 179. "As tenido accesso a tu muger, o a tu marido en la Iglesia, 
o en cimenterio? How often 1 " — 180 inquires whether the married per- 
sons have consented to allow each other to commit adultery in the cir- 
cumstances specified. — 181 refers to the canonical impediments to mar- 
riage. — 182. " Despues de aver dormido con la hija de tu muger, o con el 
hijo de tu marido, o con alguna parienta de tu muger, o de tu marido, as 
buelto a dormir con tu muger o con tu marido 1 "—183. " How often 7 " — 
184 inquires respecting the forcible abduction or rape of a woman for the 
purpose of marriage. 

3. Questions to loomen. — 186. "Are you married or single ? " — 187, 188. 
"A virgin or a prostitute 1 " — 189. " Since your last confession with how 
many men, married, single, or relatives of your husband, have you sin- 
ned ? " — 190. " With how many Priests, or persons dressed like Priests, 
or with how many Friars of whatever order, have you sinned 1 " — 191. 
" How often with each 1 " — 192 to 196 explore the number of acts of adul- 
tery, and with whom committed. — 197 to 199 refer to incontineney prior 
to marriage. — 200 to 209 investigate the various relatives and compan- 
ions, single or married, with whom the woman may- have sinned: for it 
is especially to be regarded, that all the inquiries proceed upon the princi- 
ple that the various crimes specified have been habitually perpetrated. — 210. 
"As palpado con tus manos los verguencas de algun hombreV— 211. 
"As le hecho que venga en pollucion 1 o as la tenido tu, por aver le toca- 
do, besado, o abracadol " — 212. "As consentido que toquen tus verguen- 
cas, o a tus pechos, o a otra parte de tu cuerpo 1 " — 213. "As besado las 
verguencas de algun varon *? o as consentido, que te bese a ti las tuyas, 
deleytandote en estol " — 214. " Have you embraced or kissed any man, 
with a corrupt design '? "—215 to 218 refer to various incentives to sensu- 
ality. — 219. " Have you desired to sin with a Priest or with a Friar? '' — 



CONFESSION. 335 

220. "How often V— 221, 222, 223 inquire respecting the pandering for 
other sinners. — 224. "As pecado con otra muger como tul "— 225. " How 
many % How often 1 " — 226. " Gluando hazias esse abominable pecado, 
tenias tu pensamiento en hombres casadosl solteros '? Clerigos? Religio- 
sos 1 parientes tuyos ^ o de tu marido 7 "—227. " How many 7 Who 1 "•— 
228, 229, 230, include various artifices to traffic in uncleanness for gain. — 
231. "As consentido que alguno, o algunos hombres duerman contigo, 
fuera de tu vaso natural V— 232. " How many 7 How often 7 "—233. 
"Aste puestosobre elvaronl o as consentido que pequen contigo de otra 
manera, que la naturaH" — 234. "How often 1" — 235. "As locado con 
tusmanos tusverguencas? o entrando los dedos en ellas, as venido en 
pollucion*? Ctuando esto hazias. pensavas en varon? Of how many 
men did you think 1 "—236. " How often 1 " 

On the first part of the tenth commandment are seven questions con- 
cerning the crime of adultery, and other uncleanness, of the same gene- 
ral character as the preceding "examination of conscience." 

At the close of the questions which are asked at Confession, are seve- 
ral short admonitory addresses ; and they are in precise accordance with 
the antecedent inquiries. The first is addressed to Fornicators. — The 
second to Prostitutes.— The third pretended censure is an absolute encour- 
agement to rape. — The fourth is directed to Adulterers. — The fifth, 
against carnal intercourse with spiritual relations. — The sixth censures 
husbands and wives who do not pay their conjugal debts. — The seventh 
reprehends the incestuous. — The eighth reproves women who sin with 
priests in a mass-house. — The ninth prohibits familiar embraces and 
kisses among youth.— The tenth censures Pimps and Procurers. — The 
eleventh condemns self-pollution ; and part of the first sentence must be 
extracted as a specimen : " La pollucion es mayor pecado que dormir con 
una muger de qualquier estado." Page 423. — The twelfth reprehends 
unnatural debauchees. One clause will exhibit the force of a Popish 
Priest's castigation of the most heinous sin. It cannot be translated. 
" Glue ayas cometido tal pecado corao este 1 con otro varon como tu 1 y 
que aya llegado tu maldad, a que con tu muger, o con tu manceba, ayas 
pecado por diferer te parte." — The thirteenth is entitled, "Reprehension 
contra la bestialidad." 

In the Chapter concerning Matrimony, a long examination occurs. It 
begins with Impediments from consanguinity, and affinity in all their di- 
versity, including twenty-eight questions; 

Impediment from intercourse.—'-^ Tell me, Catalina, have you slept with 
the Father, or Brother, or Uncle, of your betrothed Peter 1 " Page 605. 

Impediment from crime. — "Catalina, did you murder, or did you em- 
ploy any other person to kill your husband, that you might marry your 
betrothed Peter 1 or did you promise Peter to marry him while your 



336 CANONS FOR 

husband was living 1 Did you sleep with Peter knowing that he had a 
wifer Page 606. ^ 

The other inquiries are applied to various Popish canonical impedi- 
ments to matrimony. 



IV. CANONS FOR PENANCE. 



In contradiction to every exposure of the arcana of '^ the mystery of 
iniquity," the Jesuits and the Roman Priests in the United States inva- 
riably declare, that the documents cited by the Protestants are either for- 
ged or of no authority. To extirpate that flagrant imposition upon the 
American community, we therefore introduce a concise summary of the 
"Canones Penitentiales, quorum notitia viris ecclesiasticis est valde ne- 
cessaria — Penitential Canons, the knowledge of which is indispensable 
to ecclesiastics." They are extracted from the ''Corpus Juris Canonici 
Grcgorii XIII. Pont. Max. jussu editum." Lugduni. 1614. Cum Li- 
centia. That Pope in his prefatory bull says, that he has directed the 
volume of decrees, canons, decretals, extravagants, and Institutes of the 
canon law, to be published, that " all occasion of error may be totally re- 
moved." 

The Canons are comprised in Columns 1255 to 1264; and the Confes- 
sor is enjoined most diligently to study them, as the standard by which he 
is to decide concerning crimes; always remembering, as the introduc- 
tion states, "to discriminate in reference to the dignity of the sinner, and 
the enormity of the transgression ;" so as to appoint the penance for 
the good of the craft! The following is the enumeration of the cases to 
which priestly power and the canonical rules extend. 

1. A Priest who commits fornication with an ordinary female is con- 
demned to do penance for ten years, 

2. A priest who defiles his spiritual daughter is doomed to twelve 
years' penance. A prelate is judged to fifteen years' penance; but the 
female is adjudged to have all her property confiscated for the church, 
and to be incarcerated in a convent during her life. 

3. If any man carnally knows his spiritual mother or sister, all of 
them shall do penance for seven years. 

4. This appoints a strict penance of forty days, and also a mild addi- 
tional penance for any man who deceives a woman in reference to 
marriage. 



PENANCE. 88T 

5. If any man carnally knows two sisters, whether his wife is living or 
not, he shall do penance for seven years. 

6. If any person shall be connected with a nan or a novice, he shall 
do penance for ten years. 

7. If any man shall ignorantly be familiar with two sisters, or a mother 
and daughter, or aunt and grand-daughter, he shall do penance for seven 
years; but if he sinned wilfully, he shall always continue unmarried. 

8. A man who marries the woman whom he had seduced into adulte- 
ry, shall do penance for five years. 

9. " Clui contra naturam peccavit ;" a Priest is adjudged to perpetual 
penance ; a layman to be excluded from the public assemblies until he 
makes satisfaction to the church. This is a long clause, and immeasura- 
bly polluting. 

10. "Ctuicoierit cum brutis," shall do penance for seven years; and 
the same for incest. 

11. A Priest who is concerned in clandestine nuptials is condemned to 
three years' penance. 

12. He who violates a simple vow shall do penance for three years. 

13. An excommunicated Priest who celebrates Mass, &c., is adjudged 
to penance for three years. 

14. A voluntary homicide must expiate murder by penance of seven 
years. 

15. A casual manslayer must do penance for five years, or not at all, as 
circumstances may decide. 

16. He who kills a man from inevitable necessity shall do penance for 
two years. He who kills a thief, whom he might have captured; and 
he who slays a Pagan or a Jew, shall do penance for forty days. 

17. This canon comprises a lengthened discussion respecting the rela- 
tive criminality and penance, for the murder of a mother, a wife, a mas- 
ter, or a child ; and for exposing children at convents and mass-houses 
to be nourished by charity. In the last case, it is declared, if the parents, 
or mother in case of illegitimacy, cannot support it, the parties do not 
sin. 

18. He who murders a priest is doomed to penance for twelve years; 
but if he is a monk the term is extended to seventeen. 

19. He who falsely accuses a man so that he suffers death, shall do 
penance for seven years; which are reduced to three, if the party suffer- 
ing shall only lose any one of his members. 

20. A perjured person is condemned to forty days strict penance, and 
the subsequent lighter punishment for seven years. 

21. For him who knowingly perjures himself for his Superior, forty 
days and seven years of penance are prescribed ; but if he has testified 
falsely through coercion, forty-three days of penance are appointed. 

2d 



338 CANONS FOR 

22. He who swears falsely by the hand of a Prelate or a consecrated 
cross, must do penance for three years ; but if the cross was not conse- 
crated, one year. 

23. He who swears falsely or forces another thus to act, is condemned 
to forty days, and seven years of penance. 

24. He who uses false measures shall do penance forty days. 

25. He who violates the appointed penance shall be condemned to the 
greater penance for life. 

26. The priest who sings mass and does not communicate, shall do 
penance, and not sing mass during one year. 

27. The priest who covers a dead ecclesiastic with the altar cloth, 
shall do penance for ten years and ten months ; but a deacon, for the same 
act, is punished three years and a half 

28. He who commits sacrilege, shall do penance during seven years ; 
and he who sets fire to a mass-house, for fifteen years, and rebuild it. 

29. Parents who annul the espousals of their children are adjudged to 
penance for three years ; and the children shall suffer the same when guilty. 

30. Blasphemers of God, or of any Saint, and especially the Virgin 
Mary, "maxime beatam Virginem;" if foor^ are doomed to several tor- 
menting punishments; but if rich, he is to be heavily mulcted ; with this 
stern and startling injunction; "nullam misericordiam in hoc habiturus; 
have no mercy upon him:" and if he will not pay the demand, ''poenam 
temporalem praecipit Papa imponi per potestatem temporalem ; the 
Pope commands that the secular power* do inflict temporal punishment." 
But a blaspheming Priest is only obliged to implore pardon, however 
often he may violate the third commandment. 

31. A Priest who reveals the secrets of Confession shall be accounted 
infamous during his life. 

32. A Priest who coivlemptuously departs from the rubric in perform- 
ing the canonical hours and other official duties, shall do penance for 
six months. 

33. A Prelate who ordain? a Priest against his will shall be suspended 
during one year. 

34. 35, 36, refer to witchcraft, and other Popish legerdemain. 
37 and 38 advert to the celebration of the Mass. 

39. This canon appoints the penance for a Priest who permits a mouse 
to eat his wafer God. 

40. By this canon penance for three years is appointed for incendiaries. 

41. Various penances are prescribed for different degrees of acquaint- 
ance with heretics. 

42. The Patron of a mass-house who permits it to decay must do pen- 
ance for one year. 

43. They who study the arts of magic shall do penance for five years. 



PENANCE. 339 

44. He who will not make peace with his neighbour shall do penance 
for one year. 

45. Although penance for seven years is appointed for perjv/ry^ homicide^ 
adultery J and also for fornication ; nevertheless a lighter penance may be 
enjoined. 

46. Penance for seven, years is ordered for persons re-baptized. 

47. This canon refers to the carnal knowledge of an adulteress, and 
prescribes different terms of penance. 

Then follow various directions to Confessors; to be cautious how they 
appoint penances for rich and influential persons, so as not to alienate 
them J and also for proselytes that they may not be offended by severity; 
and to adapt their penance to the known pecuniary circumstances of the 
party. To which are added two general advices — the first is this ; to re- 
lease persons from the obligation of fasting, "dando denarium, for 
money, vel legendo psalterium, or reading the psalter" — and the second 
is of more general application ; that the prior imposed penance *' relin- 
quitur arbitrio presbyteri, may be relinqished at the will of the Priest." 



From an impartial review of these various illustrations of the Romish 
Penance and Auricular Confession ; we can easily ascertain the nefari- 
ous character and incurable corruption of those essential parts of Pope- 
ry. In the first place, the Popes claimed and exercised the right to decide 
upon the proportionate quantum of guilt in every possible iniquity. They 
next specified the nature of that penance which must be submitted to, prior 
*o the restoration of the delinquents to their favour. Speedily after they 
invented and published the Tariff of prices ; upon the payment of which 
it is stipulated, that all the inherent wickedness, and all the connected 
punishment that appertain to any transgression, are completely and for 
ever cancelled. 

One of the most impressive and melancholy considerations attached 
to the review of the preceding authentic Romish documents is this— that 
the loathsome impurity which they disclose, is not issued in books that 
are either printed and sold in profound concealment ; which compara- 
tively few decorous youth ever see, and of the contents of which they 
are ignorant ; and to procure which, they must enter into the very secret 
recesses of revolting corruption, or surreptitiously obtain them from de- 
bauchees who would not confide them to any persons but their own asso- 
ciates in vice— but those exposures are derived from the most prominent 
and duly authorized volumes emanating from the Pontifical Hierarchy. 
The wickedness also is aggravated, if we reflect ; that the pollution is 
communicated and explained in a ceremony which every Popish Priest 
teaches, and all sincere Papists believe, is the most solemn act in their 



340 CANONS FOR PENANCE. 

deceitful system; the enumeration of their sins to the Confessor; with- 
out which and his consequent absolution, they all professedly declare, 
that they cannot be delivered from that hell, '' where the worm diethnot, 
and the fire is not quenched." 

It is mischievous to suppose that the Roman Taxes for sin are abolish- 
ed. The Jesuits dare not now publish by their own sanction that accurs- 
ed book; but every Confessor in the United States understands tho 
amount demanded; and as regularly exacts it from his votaries, as his 
accomplices in fraud and dissoluteness ever did, or now do at Lisbon, or 
Naples, or Madrid, or Rome. 

It is also essential to a correct estimate of the modern Babylonish mo- 
rality, to remember ; that any man, at the present day, can purchase from 
the chief of the Papal Hierarchy in America, a *' Dispensation''^ to com- 
mit any number and kinds of sins which he may please, for a certain 
period, by contract — that at all times he can obtain pretended " Absolu- 
tion^^ for every sin which he may have perpetrated, in thought, word, 
and deed — and that he can buy an " Indulgences^ to release him from all 
the penalty of guilt, in time, and its curse in eternity ; and not only lib- 
eration from his own merited anguish, but also deliverance for his 
friends in purgatory, either in whole or in part, as he can agree with the 
treacherous priest of the Roman court. That man w^ho does not behold 
in this complex curse, a system of diabolical imposture and of ecclesias- 
tical villany, the wickedness of which no mortal imagination can con- 
ceive, is incurably blind ; unless He who formerly told the man to wash in 
the pool at Siloam, in mercy again passes by, and opens his eyes to see 
the Beast in his ugliness, the Mother of Harlots in her filthiness, and Ro- 
man Priests as they are, impious and profligate deceivers. 

The developments of Popery, in the third note of this chapter, would 
not have been conveyed so plainly to the public eye, did not the astound- 
^ing and almost incredible incredulity which all orders of citizens unfold 
in reference to Romanism, in its genuine character, its universal identity, 
and its unchanging horrors— for the Penitential Canons, and the Direc- 
tory for Confession, and the Taxes for Sin ; and the " Dispensations, Ab- 
solutions, and Indulgences," all equally exist, and are now in force, and 
in constant action, as they were in the year 1500 — render it indispensa- 
ble, by their own authentic documents, distinctly to demonstrate; that it 
is absolutely impossible for any person to be virtuous or pure who attends 
Auricular Confession ; and that every Roman Priest who practises hi^ 
own avowed system of impiety and corruption, is an audacious rebeS^ 
against God, and a flagitious enemy to man. 



DENS' THEOLOGY. 



After the preceding notes were printed, that modern work which, in 
consequence of its having been the text-book of all the present Roman 
Priests in Ireland, has recently been the subject of so much scrutiny and 
censure, ^^ Moral and Dograatic Theology, hy Peter Dens," was received; 
and to prove that Popery is universally, and always unchangeable, a few 
quotations upon the sacrament of Penance and its correlative theses, are 
subjoined. The second edition of eight thick duodecimo volumes, from 
which the ensuing extracts are made, was issued in Dublin, in 1833, by 
Richard Coyne, the Printer and Bookseller to the Irish Jesuit College at 
Maynooth, with the approbation of the chief of the Irish Papist Hierar- 
chy, Murray. 

Dens^ Moral and Dogmatic TJieology. Volume III. Numbers 134 and 
135 comprise two lengthened discussions, "De i\bortu; et De poenis 
procurantium abortium," which lucidly teach all the various modes of 
that monstrous crime. In the same volume, the following subjects are dis- 
cussed, from number 142 to 149. *' De Injuria stupri et fornication is;— De 
Rcstitutione ex stupro, si virgo libere consenserit.— Ad quid teneatur, qui 
virginem vi vel fraude defloravit?— Adquid teneatur, qui virginem cor- 
rupit sub promissione matrimonii % — Ad quid teneatur stuprator, prole 
secuta. — De Confessario stupratoris aut fornicatoris. — De Injuria et rcs- 
titutione ex adulterio. — Modus restituendi damna ex adulterio." 

Dens' Moral and Dogmatic Theology. Volume IV. The Numbers 
from 282 to 289 contain the ensuing topics. " Dccastitate et virginitate. — 
De Luxuria. — De gravitate peccati luxurise. — De speciebus luxurise.— De 
fornicatione. — De stupro. — De circumstantia virginitatis. — De raptu. — 
De adulterio. — De Incestu. — De sacrilegio carnali. — De peccato carnali 
contra naturam. — De bestialitate.— De Sodomia. — De modo contra Na- 
turam. — De poUutione. — De impudicitia in osculis, aspectibus, et tacti- 
bus. — De Turpiloquio. — De remediis contra luxurise peccata." 

From number 294, one sentence is quoted. — " Sodomia imperfecta sive 
sodomia minor est congressus carnalis maris cum femina, sed extra vas 
femineum naturale? E. G. — Si vir efiimdat semen suum retro per anum 
in intestinum feminse stercoreum." 

The whole number 295, " De modo contra naturam," is transcribed, be- 
cause it is concise ; and because it will incontrovertibly explain all the 
^tent of that inconceivably loathsome and impure intercourse to which 
29* 



342 

women are invariably subject in the Confessional, and by which every 
man's wife is contaminated. 

f " De Modo contra Naturam.—I. Ctuinta species luxuriae contra natu- 
ram committitur, quando quidem copula mascnli fit in vase feminae na- 
tural!, sed indebito modo : — Stando, aut dum vir succumbit, vel a retro 
feminam cognoscit, sicut equi congrediuntur, quamvis in vase femineo. 
II. Possunt autem hi modi inducere peccatum mortale juxta periculum 
perdendi semen, eo quod scilicet semen viri communiter non possit apte 
effundi usque in matricem feminas. — III. Ctuamvis forte conjuges dicant, 
quod illi periculo diligenter praecaveant, illi interim lascivi modi a gravi 
veniale excusari non debent, nisi forte propter inpotentiam : — Ob curvi- 
tatem axoris nequeat servari naturalis situs et modus, qui est ut mulier 
succumbat viro." 

If it be objected, that the above topics cannot possibly be subjects of in- 
quiry by Roman Priests, of women married or single ; it is replied, 
that in the sixth volume of Dens' Theology, Number 210, '' De sodomia 
reservata," page 286, the following specific rule for Confessors is intro- 
duced. *' Observeht juniores Confessarii, quod, dum Maritus confitetur 
congressum cum uxore a retro, non semper significetur sodomia minor; 
sed ordinarie copula in debito vase muliebri, quamvis indebito modo." 

Dens^ Moral and Dogmatic Theology. Volume VI. This volume is 
devoted entirely to Penance, Auricular Confession, and the connected 
topics. A few paragraphs are selected as specimens of the practical 
casuistry of the existing Romish priesthood. 

Number 90. " De Interrogationibus Faciendis;" concerning the inter- 
rogatories propounded at Confession. '' The Priest ought to examine the 
conscience of the sinner at confession, as a Physician does a wound, and* 
a Judge a cause; because frequently that which the person confessing 
would retain in silence, will be revealed by inquiries." — *' There are two 
causes why sin is not disclosed ; shame and fear, or ignorance and sim- 
plicity. — If the Confessor observes that the penitent is reserved through 
shame and fear, he must begin his interrogations from the greater sins, 
such as homicide, adultery, sacrilege, &c. — because the penitent will 
promptly answer that it is not so enormous a crime, and will then dis- 
close the truth, to evade suspicion of the greater transgression. — If the 
Confessor perceives that the acknowledgment of^sin is evaded through 
ignorance or simplicity, he must commence his questions by the minor 
oiFences." 

Number 91. — "De Interrogationibus in particulari." That discussion 
adverts to the things about which the Confessor may ask the penitent — 
and in general it is prescribed. — '* Gluis, Who l—Cluid, What ? — Ubi, 
Where ?— Cluibus auxiliis, by what aid I—Cur, Why l—Cluomodo, How '? 
Gluando, W^en T'— Which truly include every circumstance connected 



< dens' theology. 343 

with any human act; because they all are comprehensive leading 
questions. 

Number 92. — ''De Interrogationibus circa peccata singulorum sta- 
tuum :" The sins of particular conditions. Among the interrogatories 
mentioned upon this topic are the following to married women — " An 
honesto modo utatur matrimoniol — Anpericulo pollutionis seseexposu- 
erint V — Fully to understand the odious consequences of those qtteries, 
the paragraphs already quoted from Volume IV., Numbers 294 and 295, 
must be conjoined. 

The Confessor is directed thus to interrogate young women and girls. 
"An frcquentat personas alterius sexusV If that is aflirmed, then fol- 
lows—" Did you use obscene language 1 — What nexf^" — But if it is de- 
nied, then the ensuing dialogue is prescribed as a model for examination. 

Schema VIII. Number 278. '* Modus examinandi penitentem pru- 
denter circa cogitationes impudicas. Mode of prudently examining the 
penitent respecting impure thoughts." Gtuestions. " What was the occa- 
sion of them 1 — Did you endeavour to reject them 1 — How long did you 
voluntarily indulge them 7 — Did you delight in them'? — Did you consent 
to any evil act, or desire to perform the wickedness, if occasion was offer- 
ed 1— About what object or act did you delight? — Answer. Circa copulam." 
Gtuestions. " An inde secutse sunt aliquae commotiones carnales in cor- 
porel — An secuta est pollution — An miscentur sermones sive verba im- 
pudica 1 — Answer. Sic est ; de concubitu et partibus pudendis." That 
Schema, Number 280, closes with this direction respecting children. — 
" Impuberes solent in hac materia interrogari — An luserint lusus turpes 
secum vel cum aliisl — What next? Ctuid secutum'?" The volume 
also comprises a Tractate upon " Censures, and Dispensations, and In- 
dulgences," in the usual terms of Papal commutation for all sins. 

Dens' Moral and Dogmatic Theology. Volume VII. More than two 
thirds of the volume are filled with disquisitions on Matrimony. 

Number 45. — De Bonofidei. Among the instructions to the Confessor 
upon that topic, are these clauses. *' In omni peccato carnali circumstan- 
tia conjugii sit exprimenda in confessione. Interrogandi sunt conjugati 
in confessione, circa negationem debiti, prcesertim mulieres. Si se deli- 
quisse fateantur, interrogari debent, an nil secutum fuerit continentiaa 
Gonjugali contrarium, poUutio," &c. 

Numbers 46, 47, and 48 illustrate at length those themes : " De Debito 
Conjugali. — De Causis, ex quibus licet negare debitum conjugale. — De 
petitione debiti peccaminosa." Numbers 51, 52, 53, and 54 comprise 
these topics. — "De liceitate actus conjugalis et ejus finibus. — De acta 
conjugali exercito propter voluptatem. — De actu conjugali ad vitandam 
incontinentiam. — De peccatis carnalibus conjugum inter se." The out- 
rageous wickedness in those sections transcends all credibility, except 



344 



# 



ocular conviction by the perusal of the pages ; and the whole is sealed^ 
by this general rule — *' Confessarius potest etiam conjugatos interrogari 
sub histerminis." — "Confidis quod utaris Matrimonio honesto modo, non 
plus faciendo quam necessarium est ad generandam prole m'? Non habes 
specialia dubia, quae te angunt*? — Si autem penitens det occasionem 
uiterius interrogandi, inquirat Confessarius, an sibi vel comparti 
causaverit periculum poUutionis vel perditionis seminis." "What man 
who is possessed of the instincts of humanity would permit his wife 
to be asked hundreds of the minutest questions upon those sub- 
jects'? What woman who loved her husband, and the father of her 
children, could thus submit to be closely interrogated by any man ? If 
there be any fact which demonstrates the incurable filthiness and brutal- 
izing effects of Popery more than any other, it is this; that such abhor- 
rent, infernal impurities, should not only be tolerated ; but that they should 
be taught as infallible, and be embodied in the didactic text-book for the 
study of Roman Priests, with the imposing title of ^^ Moral and Dogmatic 
Theology /" To corroborate those additional decisions and rules of prac- 
tice, hundreds of the most renowned Papist writers are adduced and 
quoted : and to confirm the whole; the eighth volume is filled with Papal 
Bulls, Rescripts, and Decretals, enjoining and authorizing the whole 
pestilential mass of incurable diabolism. 

It is proper to repeat ; that nothing but the marvellous incredulity of 
American citizens, respecting the genuine principles and uniform pro- 
ceedings, pernicious tendency, and inveterate wickedness of Popery, 
would justify such a hideous and revolting exposure of the character of 
American Popish Priests; almost the whole of whom imbibed their 
soul-destroying casuistry at Maynooth College ; from the volumes above 
cited ; " Theologia Moralis et Dogmatica Petri Dens." 



CHAPTER VL 
JESUITISM. 

" THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY; AND THE WORKING OF SATAN.'* 



Historical Notices of Jesuitism — Character and proceedings 0/ Jesuitism--' 
Jesuitism incompatible with constitutional order^ and the liberty of th$ 
press — Morality of the Jesuits — Impiety — Immorality — Calumny — False- 
hood — Dissimulation in religion — F'raicds in business — Perjury — Theft-^ 
Murder — Infanticide — Regicide — Danger of Jesuitism, 

I. Historical Notices of Jesuitism. — Jesuitism was le- 
galized by the bull of Pope Paul III., 1540. Its inventor, Ig- 
natius Loyola, triumphed over all the opposition which was 
made to his scheme, by adding a novel vow to those which were 
then professed by the monastic orders. To the three vows, *'to 
maintain chastity, obedience, and poverty," Ignatius subjoined, 
unqualified submission to the sovereign pontiff. Hence the go- 
vernment of the Jesuits is an absolute monarchy ; for every thing 
is decided by the sole decree of the General. Ignatius was the 
first, and Lainez the second Master of the order. In the coun- 
cil of Trent, Lainez contended, that the council had no right to 
reform the court of Rome ; that annats and taxes were paid to 
the Pope by divine right ; and that Jesus Christ, having the au- 
thority to dispense with all sorts of laws, the Pope, his vicar, 
has the same authority. 

The Jesuits speedily established themselves in Europe, Asia, 
and America ; penetrated into all classes of society ; wheedled 
the people by the exterior forms of devotion ; and applied them- 
selves above all things to cajole the great ; by which they acquir- 
ed vast power, and ruled their masters. 

In one of the French Colleges, over the altar, they placed a 
famous painting which illustrated their ambitious schemes. 
The Church was represented as a ship, on board of which ap- 



346 JESUITISM. 1^ 

peared the Pope, Cardinals, Prelates, and all the Papal hierar- 
chy, while the rudder was held by the Jesuits. 

At a very early period after the establishment of the order, the 
civil and ecclesiastical authorities of France proclaimed that 
*' the society was dangerous to the Christian faith, disturbers of 
the peace, and more fitted to corrupt than to edify." 

The Jesuits were implicated in the assassination of Henry III. 
of France — planned the Spanish Armada — often contrived the 
death of Elizabeth of England — invented the Gunpowder plot 
— instigated the murder of Henry IV. of France — impelled the 
revocation of the edict of Nantz — ruined James II. — and were 
commingled with all the atrocities and miseries which desolated 
Europe during nearly two hundred years. So atrocious, exten- 
sive, and continual were their crimes, that they were expelled, 
either partially or generallj^ from all the diflerent countries of 
Europe, at various intervals, prior to the abolition of the order in 
1773 — THIRTY-NINE TIMES — a fact Unparalleled in the history 
of any other body of men ever known in the world. This is 
the seal of reprobatio7i stamped icpon Jesuitism. 

What crimes among governments have they not committed ! 
what chicanery in courts and families ! what knavery, despotism, 
and audacity in violating covenants, defying power, and falsifying 
truth and right ! Ambiguous and evasive subtleties of language 
always permitted them to choose that which promoted their in- 
terests. The choice of means never embarrassed them. Every 
thing was rectified by the doctrine of intention. In all places 
they would exclusively rule — and abettors of every species of 
despotism, in all times -and situations, they loaded the nations 
with an insupportable yoke ; and fettered them in the most gall- 
ing chains. 

What other monastic order ever realized thirty-nine expul- 
sions, and yet by their artifices could procure the restoration of 
their craft ? What other order of men ever saw their dogmas, 
thousands of the very vilest doctrines, condemned by courts of 
justice, and censured by universities and theologians? What 
other order ever were so implicated in crimes of treason, and 



JESUITISM. 347 

tragedies of blood, both public and private, and have continued, 
during their whole existence, to live at war with all mankind? 

The Jesuits subjugated Europe by their intrigues. They 
entered into the necessities of the times. By their prodigious 
diffusion, and their restless activity, they w^ere universally pres- 
ent. By their haughty opposition to the Reformation, they gained 
the affections of the Court of Rome, who beheld in them the 
most ardent champions of their faith, and the most fearless op- 
ponents of their enemies. The Jesuits inherited the maxim of 
Tiberius, and always have said and acted in conformity to it — 
" oderint, dum metuant ; let them hate, so that they dread us." 

The instructions of the Jesuits have been developed by Pas- 
cal ; in the decrees of the Sorbonne ; the censures of universities; 
the denunciations of parliaments ; and the Papal condemnation. 
The number of authors approved by the Jesuits, who have 
written in direct opposition to all religion and morals, is three 
hundred and twenty-six — all which works are admitted as infal- 
lible authority on every casuistical question. 

Upon probable opinions, 50 ; philosophical sin, invincible 
Ignorance, and an erroneous conscience, 33; simony, 14; blas- 
phemy and sacrilege, 7; irreligion, 35 ; immodesty, 17; perjury 
and false witness, 28; prevarication of judges, 5; theft, secret 
compensation, and concealment of property, 33 ; homicide, 36 ; 
treason, 68. Those three hundred and twenty-six most wicked 
and dangerous publications were condemned, at different periods, 
by forty universities ; one hundred prelates ; three provincial 
synods ; seven general assemblies ; and forty-eight decrees, 
briefs, letters apostolic, and papal bulls from Rome. 

The spirit of liberty and equal rights, of commerce, of indus- 
try, and of occupations beneficial to society, must be contrary to 
Jesuitism ; for there are no points of contact between them. To 
that spirit, Jesuitism is totally hostile in all its doctrines, usages, 
members, and associations. He who mentions an armed despot- 
ism against freedom, intelligence, and prosperity, names Jesuit- 
ism ; which ever has been the inseparable companion of mili- 
tary force and absolute power. 



348 JESUITISM. Wk 

Vallestigny, deputy of Alva, presented to Ferdinand III, king 
of Spain, this address: ** The mass of the human family are 
horn, not to govern, hut to he governed. The sublime employ- 
ment of governing, has been confided by providence to the priv- 
ileged class, whom he has placed upon an eminence, to which 
the multitude cannot rise without being lost in the labyrinth and 
snares which are therein found." This is the doctrine of Jesuit- 
ism ; and its most active and undisguised organ, thus advised 
royalty in France and Spain : " Never emhark ujpon the stormy 
sea of deliberative assemblies ; nor surrender your absolute 
character and authority.^^ 

The Jesuits proscribe general instruction, because it is too 
favourable to the progress of intelligence among the people. 
They maintain, that public tuition should be remitted entirely to 
the Romish clergy for boys, and to Nuns for girls. They affirm, 
that the liberty of the press is Pandora^ s box, and the source of 
all evil. They denounce vaccination, as too favourable to popu- 
lation. They desire that the people should be less numerous 
and less instructed. They wish that all the feudal systems 
should be restored, that they may partake of its absolute power 
— ^and they would make Romanism the basis of society, that its 
worship and its priests may be supported. Thus Jesuitism is the 
sworn enemy of the progress of light and liberty — for it claims 
entire despotism and unrestricted empire. 

Popery, and especially Jesuitism, by the instrumentality of the^ 
Priesthood, takes possession of all that constitutes human life. 
It lays its iron hand upon all civil relations. This is the inevi- 
table result of the system which ever subsists in the court of 
Rome. 

Pope Pius VII., in a rescript addressed to his nuncio at Ven 
ice, asserted his pontifical right to depose sovereigns — *' although 
it is not always convenient to exercise the jurisdiction.'''^ 

The Jesuits are a body of men whose political principles ar« 
so dangerous, that they have been excluded from almost every 
country in which they were residents ; which act was full oj 
sound policy and wise preservatioii. 



JESUITISM. 349 

Has Jesuitism ever opposed any one of the long existing 
thousand scourges of human society? Has Jesuitism ever 
amended the condition of hospitals, or purified or adorned cities ? 
Did Jesuitism ever demand the abolition of the torture, the Bas- 
tile, monastic pollutions, or the inquisition ? Are mankind in- 
debted to Jesuitism for their modern regeneration, the emayicipa- 
tion of Greece, and the independence of America? 

What benefits can Jesuitism produce 1 Public instruction in 
England, Holland, the North of Europe, Germany, and the 
United States of America, is placed beyond its control. The 
advantages which may be expected to accrue to civil society, 
from the restoration of Jesuitism, are written in its code of im- 
morality, and in the empire which it has exercised over the in- 
terior of families. Who can accurately comprehend the full 
degree of that tyranny which it exercised over domestic society, 
when it entirely swayed the minds and hearts of Avomen and ser- 
vants, controlled youth, and remained master of the household. 
Jesuitism 'is a familiar devil who enters the house 
CRAWLING IN THE DUST, and cuds by commanding with lordly 
haughtiness — a domestic tyrant, which it is impossible to expel 
after it is once admitted. Therefore, boldly unfold these facts to 
your families — " Fermez vos fortes aux Jesuites, ou renoncez a 
Pespoir de la paix: c^est un levain qui, chez vous, fermentera 
sans cesse, et aigrira tout — Shut your doors against the Jesuits, 
or renounce all hope of peace. Jesuitism is the leaven which 
will incessantly ferment and embitter every thing." 

H. CHARACTER AND PROCEEDINGS OF JESUITISM. JcS- 

uitism is tyranny by religion — this reveals all the contexture 
of that marvellous institution, in its peculiar tact of scrutiny 
and deception. It cunningly varied its occupations; widely 
classified men to leave no talent idle; detached one individual 
from another, that each might live only for the advantage of the 
order; artfully arranged its concerns with all classes of society; 
and made all its members submit to theyoke-of the most austere 
discipline, and to the application of the hardest policy. As an 
absolute monarchy, Jesuitism surpasses in despotism every arbi- 
30 



S50 JESUITISM. 

trary tyrant ; by the boundless power granted to the General, 
and from him to the Superiors ; by that obedience imposed upon 
the inferiors, which annihilates all their own w411; by the doctrine 
of extravagant authority, which exceeds even the claims of Asi- 
atic sovereignty; by the^ support of associates taken from its 
bosom, a tribute raised from all kinds of credulity, fear, and am- 
bition ; and by its secret ramifications, which gives it eyes and 
ears and hands everywhere, all of which are occupied in pene- 
trating and communicating to the .Chief, the secrets of states, 
families, and individuals, thus uniting them as in a common 
centre. Hence, was formed that Jesuitism which filled the 
world, which engrossed its concerns during two hundred years, 
and which again demands its former supremacy. The first Je-' 
suit, with a submissive and humble tone, approached the Pope, 
Thrones, Prelates, and Judges ; but, amazing colossus ! soon it 
domineered over some of them, and divided or vanquished the 
others. 

Ignatius thus addressed the Vatican : *' Your ancient props no 
longer suffice ; 1 offer you new support. You must have a fresh 
army, which shall cover you with the arms of heaven and 
earth. Adopt my well instructed auxiliaries. Light makes 
war upon you. We will carry intelligence to some, darken 
knowledge in others, and direct it in all." At Madrid, that 
knight-errant of Popery proclaimed — "The human mind is 
awakened. If its energy is not extinguished, all eyes will be 
opened ; and an alliance will be formed incompatible with the 
ancient subjection. Men wall search for rights of which they 
are now ignorant — the throne will lose its loft}'' prejudices, and 
its power will vanish wdth its enchantments." 

The bait was seized. Treaties were speedily signed ; and 
Jesuitism freely made its delusive experiments, under the shelter 
of the Roman ecclesiastical and political despotisms. Thus the 
spiritual w^as mingled with the corporeal, in favour of those who, 
like a two-edged sword, offered to serve both powers. From its 
very birth, Jesuitism, installed in ghostly and temporal attri- 



JESUITISM. 351 

butes, strengthened by the mixture, active, and decided, has 
never changed. 

But to secure this protection both from the sceptre and the 
mitre, what must Jesuitism perform ? Go into beaten and an- 
cient paths, after those monastic orders, which under a hundred 
diversified forms have passed away from the world disgusted 
with them ? No : Jesuitism looked beyond that point — and of all 
which had swayed the monastic families, Ignatius took only the 
principal features. The rest was a novel fabric. 

Jesuitism knew that the empire of the world is not obtained at 
the foot of the altar ; but that it is the reward of obstinate labour, 
and of time occupied in the severest exercises. The Jesuit re- 
gards the world as an arena, and himself as a competitor who 
must never desert the lists. Full of this excitement, Jesuitism 
leaves other monks to count beads, and pray seven times daily. 
Its object is of a higher destiny — to govern the world : to seize 
it at all points ; and like a skilful general, it seeks and assigns 
employ to all its members. The weak are stationed around the 
altars, to attract by their sanctimonious fervor — the learned fill 
the chairs of sacred and profane literature — the crafty attach 
themselves to those in exalted stations, that by their means, they 
may obtain and direct power for their own advantage — and the 
strong go forth to proselyte. This was a vast and artful plan ; 
and to fulfil it, a sagacity in the means of execution was demand- 
ed equal to that which presided at its formation. 

What government could suit and adapt itself to an order of 
things so boundless and lofty ? An absolute monarchy. - How 
is this monarchy conducted ? By the command of one over all ; 
and in the obedience of all to that same one. Hence the tyranny 
of Jesuitism is the most complete of all those which despots 
ever tried; for the General of the Jesuits is the true Supreme; 
and all the Superiors, who are delegates of this outrageous 
power, like their master, are absolute. Under this double weight, 
the subject must remain crushed. This jurisdiction is immense ; 
but how could gradations in it be established ? How could in- 
termissions of authority be admitted in a domination which must 



352 JESUITISM. 

act at the same moment, and in the same operation, upon men of 
various climates, manners, and languages, from Mexico to Rome? 
Without absolute control, how could the necessary bonds to unite 
them together be maintained ? 

Despotism is inherent in Jesuitism, which is the essence of 
an absolute monarchy. Irresistible power resides in the chief, 
and unresisting obedience in a 11 the members; and to corroborate 
that authority, already so strong in its principle, the dispensing 
and interpretative power is always combined. Jesuitism refers 
to the corsmand, and nothing must arrest it ; but Jesuitism also 
interprets and dispenses with it — hence no obstacles exist j be- 
cause a prerogative is admitted, which placing the good of the 
body above that of its single members, attributes to it the faculty 
of separating those who are not acpording to its views, from 
those who are irrevocably united to it. Thus with Jesuitism, 
iniquity stops it not ; for if it could be impeded in only one point, 
there would be an end of absolute, universal power. 

In Jesuitism, the members of the body are only the stones of 
the edifice ; they are made for it, not it for them ; hence every 
thing must be sacrificed for its conservation. As Jesuitism must 
act upon the varied qualities of innumerable persons, of course, , 
it requires a perfectly flexible and accommodating morality, very 
distant from that stubbornness which would repel ; but susceptible 
of gratifying all temperaments, conveniences, and humors ; and 
for that purpose, Jesuitism admits of corrective institutions, men- 
tal reservations, double directions, and the adaptation of means 
according to the merit of the end : so that conscience may not 
be restricted in its course, but expatiate in a wide field of excep- 
tions ; and convenient probabilities may be substituted, for the ^ 
clear light of that instruction which truth and a good conscience 
always reveal. 

Jesuitism cannot dispense with skilful workmen ; and excels 
in the choice of its agents. It possesses in the highest degree 
the quality of attraction, and of judgment in the dispositions of 
youth ; so that they may be made desirous to unite with the 
order. Before its mansion is displayed a golden door ; hence it 



JESUITISM. 353 

is acceptable and sought after by the great, desired by the hum- 
ble, dreaded by the weak, and supported by the powerful. Je- 
suitism is of universal capacity ; it operates upon human feeble- 
ness, dazzles the eyes by its exterior solemnities, and discards the 
robes of pedantry. It is a child with children ; a king with 
kings ; affable and menacing ; both simple and shrewd in ap- 
pearance ; a Janus with two faces ; a Proteus in a hundred 
forms; and a chamelion in ever-shifting hues, more faithful to 
hatred than friendship ; very attentive to preserve the claim of 
superiority in all its career ; holding its wakeful eyes incessantly 
open over the whole social hierarchy to judge of its position, 
and according to that knowledge to direct its movements. 

The Jesuit General is served by a zealous militia, an incal- 
culable number of devoted volunteers everywhere present. 
Thus information arrives by a thousand ways ; and places the 
whole world under the watchful control of the chief A sover- 
eign who wished to know all that was passing in other nations, 
had only to use Jesuitical policy, and to apply to the General of 
the order. The following remarkable fact aptly illustrates the 
character and fearfulness of Jesuitism. 

The Duke of Choiseul was appointed Ambassador from 
France to Rome, in 1753.^ Langier, a Jesuit, delivered a dis- 
course before him full of violent invectives against the Jansenists 
and the French Government; who wished to punish the Jesuit, but 
they dreaded the Society. The Duke, supping withM. Rouille, 
the minister for foreign affairs, said — that the Jesuit ought to be 
driven from Versailles, and not be permitted to preach any more. 
One day, at Rome, he was astonished to hear that he was consid- 
ered to be an enemy of the Jesuits. Gallic, Assistant General 
of the order, informed the Duke,. " that they well knew he was 
not their friend;" and gave him for proof, what he had said in 
perfect confidential- privacy to M. Rouille, concerning Langier. 

Jesuitism knew that concealed and innumerable ways, leading 

to a common centre, are a powerful means of direction and fear. 

Men dread to declare their opinions, and to act concerning those, 

whom they expect to meet at all times, a»d in every situation. 

80* 



354 JESUITISM. 

Jesuits are aware that the reputation of implacahility places at 
a distance intimidated enmity ; and therefore, their system retains 
an inexorable memory, which forgets nothing, but knows all. 
What young ecclesiastic, what family aspiring to advance one of 
its members in the world, would have dared to show to the Jesuits 
any opposition or even dislike ? This would have interdicted 
all access to the rank w^hich the order proposes to their candi- 
dates. 

Jesuitism knows that the largeness of the base gives stability 
to the edifice — ^therefore, to consolidate its power, energy, and op- 
ulence, it combined with all interests ; took support from all 
points, enlarged its foundation as much as possible, and thus 
united in its support those who feared the commotions which its 
overthrow might occasion. The Jesuits are aware, that power 
and absence go not together ; and that to reign over the scene, it 
must ever be present. Like men w^ho care not what is said of 
them, provided they are talked of, Jesuitism is indifferent to the 
means of attracting regard. It will proclaim the most outra- 
geous dogmas ; mingle in all controversies ; and originate con- 
tinual disputes. In the midst of universal propositions, it retains 
its own concealed doctrines ; and admits the generally received 
code of morality ; but holds its own inexplicable subtleties. The 
Jesuits desire to explain every thing, that they may bewilder tha 
world in their labyrinth ; and the subject of debate is of no im- 
" portance, provided the strife endures, and fixes public attention. 
A Jesuit sighs only for the honour and triumph of the body. 
Far from desiring or seeking to break his laborious chain, he 
never complains. His language is, " poverty, obscurity, obliv- 
ion and death, be mine ; so that riches, fame, glory, and triumph, 
attach to the order throughout the world.'- 

The spirit of domination is the soul of Jesuitism ; which sways 
the temporal power by the spiritual authority. Intolerance, with 
the mixture of that control, has been the most prolific source ot 
all those evils w^hich ever have afflicted humanity. False no- 
tions and incorrect apprehensions engender collisions. In t&at 
deceitful art, Jesuitism is Graiid Master. It formerly kept a 



JESUITISM. 355 

school for it, and from its books, the order made a trade and mer- 
chandize — and they are now resuming their occupation with all 
their arsenal of reservations, subtleties, and equivocations. 

That unholy mixture of spiritual and temporal power offended 
reason, afflicted society, and desolated the world. It is most op- 
posite to that new order of affairs which the progress of light 
Kas introduced. It caused frightful evils : and we cannot be pre- 
served from them by the revival of those Jesuits who produced 
them ; and who formed an empire in Paraguay, which was gov- 
erned by Priests, only resembling a monastic community, dwell 
ing in an unwalled convent. 

III. JESUITISM INCOMPATIBLE WITH CONSTITUTIONAL 

ORDER, AND THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS. — Constitutional 
order is the social contract reduced to loritten laws, that the 
knowledge of them may be certain and easy ; to regular laws, 
derived from the social right and conformed to its principles ; 
and to laws made and adopted by society for their own welfare. 
On the contrary, Jesuitism is a necessary defender of absolute 
power, without deliberative assemblies ; and which abhors consti- 
tutional order. 

What is the liberty of the press ? A sentinel destined to warn 
us of all the movements made by the enemies of society, that we 
may be guarded against surprise. But how can this accord with 
Jesuitism ? The liberty of the press is regular freedom ; but 
Jesuitism is arbitrary despotism. That seeks the utmost pub- 
licity ; this conceals itself in crooked and hidden paths. That 
is sincere ; but Jesuitism is one entire mass of mental reserva- 
tions, subterfuges, equivocations, and secret intentions contrary 
to open acts. That demands religious liberty; but Jesuitism 
enacts Roman intolerance. That proposes the development of 
the human intellect ; Jesuitism is its restraining tyrant. The 
liberty of the press displays those broad openings to industry, 
commerce, and the innumerable occupations which supply all 
the wants of society ; Jesuitism is the art to create and prolong 
collisions. Therefore, constitutional order cannot exist, or Jes- 
uitism must be extinct — they are totally incompatible with each 



S56 JESUITISM. 

Other. Hatred of the liberty of the press is essential to Jesuit- 
ism ; but as constitutional order is inseparable from the freedom 
of the press, it follows, that Jesuitism is at permanent and un- 
changeable hostility with both those essentials of national pros- 
perity. 

It is usual to hear the phrase, *' Government cannot exist 
with the freedom of the press." Thus men pretend to talk amid 
those stupendous and brilliant events which the world now wit- 
ness. Is the press not free in America ? Yet society is well 
governed, and wdth great facility. Is the press not free in Eng- 
land ? And is that country ungovernable ? Is not France as 
well governed since the abolition of the censorship of books 
and newspapers, as during its restrictions ? Where then are the 
obstructions to government from that cause ? 

The condition of Spain and Portugal answers that question; 
for they are not only strangers to the liberty of the press, but 
openly hostile to it. Are those people so easily governed as 
America ? Before the establishment of constitutional order, and 
the liberty of the press, when the feudal system swayed, was it 
more easy to govern men than now ? 

In countries w^here silence reigns w^ith absolute power, it is 
said — "it is impossible to govern w^ith a free press." Certainly; 
for each battery from the press offers a public appeal to the ex- 
amination of that power ; and it cannot but be jealous of sub- 
mitting to that scrutiny. To exculpate itself upon its own prin- 
ciples, arbitrary despotism is forced to accuse the press, and to 
impute to it those evils which flow only from tyrannic arro- 
gance ; not perceiving that all those allegations are included in 
the fact, — " absolute power and the liberty of the press cannot 
©o-exist." 

Thus Jesuitism complains . — "With the freedom of the press, 
how can I serve despotism ? And cited every day before the pub- 
lic tribunal, how can I fascinate the eyes of the purblind multi- 
tudes, and scatter the seeds of passive obedience through coun- 
tries enlightened and refreshed by a sun which never sets upon 
them ? Accursed be the liberty of the press !" Thus Jesuitism 



JESUITISM. 357 

raves. Concerning their other opinions, which, with an enslaved 
press, demand official bucklers for religion, the tranquillity of 
the state, the peace of families, and respect for dignities ; look at 
America ! Is piety wanting there ; or honour for their Govern- 
ment and Senators; or social quietude; or domestic concord; or 
municipal order ; or female purity and character ? 

The right and the penal code of liberty are distinct topics. 
Experience has proved, that the public derive no advantage from 
condemnations of this species; and that in general, instead of 
purifying, they corrupt society. During the civil wars of Britain 
and France, those nations were covered with scaffolds. In Spain 
and Italy, the more they murdered, the more remained to be 
killed. Leopold abolished the punishment of death in Tuscany; 
and the prisons remained nearly empty, while the gallows was 
vacated. Holland and Switzerland were the most free countries 
in Europe as to the press : what could not elsewhere be publish- 
ed was there printed — yet Holland was as rich in peace and 
good morals, as in money ; and in Switzerland, part of the hab- 
itations were without bolts and locks to the doors. 

One of the chiefs of a sound and correct philosophy publicly 
declared in France, that affairs had attained such a crisis, that 

"JESUITISM AND PUBLIC LIBERTY ARE IRRECONCILABLE J 
AND THAT THE REPUBLICS OF SOUTH AMERICA, IN ADOPTING 
POPERY AS THEIR ESTABLISHED RELIGION, WERE GUILTY OF 

NATIONAL SUICIDE." But expausivo ideas germinate not where 
Jesuitism sways; for its blasting breath dries up and withers 
every thing it infects. 

Since the French revolution in 1789, society reclaiming their 
legitimate rights, separated the tivil marriage from the religious 
ceremony. Before that period, the Priest combined a civil office 
with his ecclesiastical character. His register regulated the state 
of citizens. Thus by a strange confusion of ideas, and the con- 
sequence of this deplorable mixture of spiritual and temporal 
things, which has caused so much evil in the world, a religious 
act conferred civil rights, and a Priest determined the condition 
of citizens. 



358 JESUITISM. 

That revolution corrected the disorder, and placed the citizen 
in his natural situation ; but as it was feared that custom and ig- 
norance might induce many to be contented with the , priestly- 
ceremony, the new legislative code appointed, that the civil mar- 
riage should precede the religious form. 

Roman Priests never allow that any one of their disciples has 
been married, unless the ceremony is performed by themselves. 
4t is of no consequence to them, how valid the matrimonial -con- 
tract may be in the decision of the law ; the parties are denounc- 
ed as living in fornication ; and no peace will be experienced by 
them, until they have passed through the Roman ceremonial, 
and paid the Priest's demand, which, in that case, always includes 
a heavy fine. Men who designedly marry Protestant women, 
often evade the claim ; but where a Romish female is married to 
a Protestant man, intimidated by the Priest's debasing character 
of her mode of living, and by his threats of the awful conse- 
quences, scarcely an instance is known, in which the man, for 
the sake of domestic peace, is not ensnared to submit to the cere- 
monial, and of course, to pay the sum of which he is thus 
openly defrauded. A late bull of Pope Pius VIL, declares, 
" all marriages, loithout a Roman priesfs celebration, are null 
and void^ — De Pradt. Jesuitisme Ancien et Moderne. 

The Society of Jesuits was avowedly organized to counteract 
the influence of resuscitated Christianity. They nearly su- 
perseded all the other orders, and now constitute the Roman 
Pontiff's "body-guard;" expressly to defend the papal corrup- 
tions, and by every possible means to exterminate all persons 
who will not submit to the Romish Priesthood. The govern- 
ment of the order is the absolute despotism of an individual, 
exercising his undisputed control over the destiny, persons, con- 
duct, belief, words, thoughts, and purposes of every devotee be- 
longing to that nefarious association. All their principles, rules, 
and acts are comprised in one vow, '* at all times to go upon any 
service, and to execute every mandate" of the General of the 
order, promptly, and without hesitation; that is, "it is an oath of 
unqualified obedience to the Pope." Their diabolical tenets, 



JESUITISM. SS9 

their antisocial intrigues, their intolerable corruptions, and the 
innumerable murders, and treasons, and wide-spread desolations 
which they had perpetrated, coerced almost every government 
in Europe to banish them from their countries. Still they sur- 
vived under the name of St. Sulpicius, Cordicoles, Freres de 
la Croix, and other titles. Pope Clement XIV. as he supposed, 
by his pontifical authority, suppressed them in 1773 ; for which 
act they poisoned their " Infallible Supreme.'' Notwithstanding 
the execrations of every Christian, the opposition of all civilized 
nations, the denunciations and curses of Popes and Potentates, 
and their exterminating decrees and laws, that detestable Society 
yet exists ; and from documents discovered at Montrogue, one 
of their magnificent establishments near Paris, since the expul- 
sion of Charles X. from France, in 1830; it is ascertained, that 
they then amounted to 22,787; of whom 11,010 were Priests, 
which number has certainly increased ; and that they then pos- 
sessed sixty-one institutions for " Novices,^'' Jesuits of the first 
class ; and 669 colleges for " Scholar Sy^ Jesuits of the second 
class; and 176 seminaries for " Coadjutors,''^ Jesuits of the third 
class ; and twenty-four houses for the " Professed,''^ the highest^ 
and finished class of the order ; who alone are considered the 
perfectly accomplished Jesuits. 

IV, Morality of the Jesuits. — The means by which 
they originally consolidated and have hitherto prolonged their 
power and mischiefs, have been through the pretext of educating 
youth, and by the immorality or rather the plenary indulgence 
which they have granted for the commission of every degree of 
turpitude through auricular confession. The idea which is so 
prevalent, that Jesuits and the Ursuline Nuns, who are only fe- 
male Jesuits, for their principles and regulations are identical, 
are peculiarly qualified for the education of youth, is not less 
deceptive, as is verified by facts, than it is pernicious in reference 
to morals and piety. Jesuitism is the quintessence of Popery; 
and its Priests and adepts are most graphically delineated by the 
apostle John; Revelation 16: 13, 14. They are '* unclean spirits, 
like frogs out of the mouth of the Dragon, out of the mouth of 



360 J1ESUITISM. 

the Beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet ; the spirits of 
Devils, going- forth unto the whole world, to gather them to the 
battle of the great day of God Almighty." They always strive 
to reconcile the consciences of their followers to every species of 
crime ; to initiate their disciples into the practice of the most 
flagrant iniquity without remorse, by their casuistry combining 
"all deceivableness of unrighteousness ;" to nullify the authority 
of every divine law and all human obligation ; and in short, to 
change the essential character of morality and virtue, so that un- 
godly men may indulge every depraved propensity, and commit 
the most horrid sins without the imputation or the sense of guilt. 

The following brief summary will partially develop the nature 
and extent of that atrocious system called Jesuitism, and of the 
unparalleled enormities which Jesuits emphatically inculcate and 
sanction. 

Impiety. — This question was proposed for discussion among 
the Jesuit Casuists — " When is a man obliged actually to love 
God?" Escobar, in his Tract 1, Ex. 2. Num. 21 ; and Tract. 5, 
Ex. 4. Num. 8; recites the decisions of many authors, the grand 
inference from the whole of which diversity of opinion is this — 
" We are not so much commanded to love him, as not to hate 
him."— Sirmond Def Virt. Tract. 2, Sect. 1. 

Sanchez declares — " A man neither commits sin, nor is guilty 
of any irreverence towards God, when he presumes to address 
him in his devotions, although at the same time he actually pro- 
poses mortally to offend the Deity." — Opuscul. Moral. Book 7, 
Chap. 2. 

Hurtado avows — *' It is enough to be bodily present at mass, 
though a man is mentally absent ; provided he is externally re- 
verential." — Sacram. Vol. 2: 5. Dist. 2. To which opinion 
CJoninck assents — Quest. 83 ; 6. — But Vasquez adds — " A man 
fulfils the precept of hearing mass, even though he have not the 
least intention to hear it." 

Escobar thus determines — '* If a man intends to hear mass as 
he ought, he fully performs that duty, nor does any depraved 



JESUITISM. 361 

intention counteract it, even that of beholding women with con- 
cupiscence."— Theolog. Mor. Tract. 1, Ex. 11. 

Mascerrennas dedicated his work upon the Sacraments to the 
Virgin Mary, and affirms, that all the doctrines which he incul- 
cates he was taught by herself. In his Tract. 5, he thus ex- 
pounds — " He who goes to mass, only to take that opportunity 
to look upon a woman with unchaste desires, and were it not for 
that end, would not go thither at all, fulfils the precept of hear- 
ing mass, even though he expressly intended not to fulfil it." — 
How does that dogma coincide with the Lord's admonition, Mat- 
thew 5 : 27, 28 ? 

In his "Fundamental Theology," page 134; Caramuel avers — 
*' Those who follow the most gentle, that is, the most licentious 
of all the probable opinions, ought to be called virgins, because 
those opinions enable men to behave themselves with such 
purity, that they do not commit even venial sin." To which 
Le Moine, in his "Easy Devotion," page 244, 291, subjoins; 
** Having thus overthrown the scarecrow w^hich the devils had 
set up at her gate, devotion is rendered less troublesome than 
vice, and more easy than pleasure, so that simply to live is in- 
comparably more difficult than to live well." 

In the Apolog. pour les Casuistes, pages 26, 28, is this com-- 
prehensive clause — " Violations of the decalogue are not sins, 
when they are committed by a man from ignorance, surprise, or 
passion." — Upon which dogma there are the following practical 
comments. — " A man is not obliged to desist from those occasions 
and opportunities in which he runs the hazard of damnation ; if 
he cannot do it with ease and convenience. A Confessor ought 
to absolve a woman who entertains in her house a man with 
whom she often sins ; if she cannot discard him without loss of 
reputation or comfort, or if sne have any cause for retaining 
him." — Bauny Somme des Peches; 1083. 

"A Pagan," says Lacroix, Volume 1, page 104, 106, "igno- 
rant of the Christian religion or of the true God, is excusable for 
worshipping idols ; for whoever acts agreeably»to the dictates of 
conscience whether certainly right or invincibly wrong, cannot 
31 



862 JESUITISM. 

offend God ; for invincible ignorance, though even of the law c# 
nature, sufficiently excuses those who act according to such ig- 
norance." 

Trachala, in his " Laver of Conscience, or sure guide to Priests 
for Confession," Title 6, Case 2, thus writes — " There is much 
difficulty in comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity and of 
Incarnation ; and of that -knowledge, ignorant persons and chil- 
dren seem absolutely incapable; ho\v then is a Confessor to be- 
have with such penitents?" Lessius answ^ers, that "an explicit 
and distinct faith, not being necessary, such persons may be ab- 
solved without hesitation. It is sufficient for them, that they be- 
lieve in a confused and implicit manner." 

The ensuing injunctions are denominated " Rules for con- 
science." — Charli's Propositions, 11, 14 and 15. "If, through 
invincible error, you believe that God hath commanded you 
to lie and blaspheme, then lie and blaspheme ! Neglect even 
the worship of God, if you conceive he hath prohibited it." — 
With whom agree Cabrespine, Le Moyne, Georgelin, and Di- 
Castillo, who in his work on Justice and other cardinal virtues. 
Book 2, Tract. 2. Disput. 9. Dub. 2. Num. 48, decides that 
" theft is a venial sin, if it was committed without deliberation.'* 
Busserot also maintained this Thesis : " Antecedent and invin- 
cible ignorance, whether of natural laws or of positive statutes, 
entirely takes away the voluntariness of the act, and consequently 
exempts from sin." 

" He who has received a blow may not intend to revenge 
himself, but to avoid infamy; and thus may return the injury by 
his sword." — Lessius, Just. Lib. 2. Cap. 9. Dub. 12. 

Le Moyne in his first proposition affirms — " A Christian may 
deliberately discard his Christian character, and act as other 
men in things which are not properly Christian." 

"A Son may wish for the death of his Father, and may re- 
joice whun it happens, if it proceed only from a consideration of 
the advantage w^hich accrues to himself, and not from personal 
hatred."— Hurtado Sub. Peic. Disput. 9. 

The Jesuit doctrines concerning " Probable Opinions" trans- 



JESUITISM. 363 

cend all the other perverse machinations of depravity in their 
direct tendency to promote infidelity and ir religion. They in- 
culcate, that when there are two contradictory probable opinions 
upon any point, some maintaining a thing to be lawful and others 
that it is prohibited, both opinions are equally safe in conscience. 
Though one of them must necessarily be contrary to the law of 
God, yet a man with equal security may follow that which is 
false as that which is true. One illustration selected from Cas- 
tro Paolo's work upon "Virtues and Vices," Part 1, Tract 4, 
Disput. 1, Point 12, Num. 14, will suffice for this topic. ^' We 
are not obliged in making choice of the way of salvation, to take 
that which is most certain or probable; because there may hap- 
pen to be an error in that which appears the most certain and 
probable. When the probability of right is founded upon the 
probability of fact, I conclude from the probability of fact the 
probability of right. For example; it is probable to me that 
the cloak which I wear is my own : but it is more probable that 
it belongs to you — I am not obliged however to give it to you, but 
have a right to take care of it for myself It may be probable 
to a heretic that he is of the true religion, though the contrary 
may be more probable, but it is not clear that we should there- 
fore oblige him to renounce his errors." — According to that prin- 
ciple, there can be neither theft nor heresy ; for all right and 
wrong are inseparably blended, or rather all evil is good, and all 
vice is virtue, upon the adoption of the Jesuitical probable 
opinion. That doctrine, fifty-five of the most renowned Jesuit 
authors have deliberately and fully ratified. 

Immorality. — The utmost extent of human corruption is 
minutely unfolded and adapted, by the Jesuit system, to persons 
of all characters and conditions. Every diversified unholy tem- 
per, covetousness, pride, en\y, ambition, hatred, and revenge, 
with their concomitant irregularities, are expressly recommended. 
Extravagance, intemperance both in food and drink, and volup- 
tuousness are directly approved. Disobedience to parents is for- 
mally justified, with insubordination to national laws and gor- 
ernments. 



364 JESUITISM. 

Some specimens of their diabolical casuistry respecting* the 
social crimes are incorporated ; that a correct estimate of the at- 
tributes and effects of Jesuitism may certainly be formed. 

Calumny. — Caramuel in his Theolog. Fund., says— "It is 
not mortal sin to calumniate falsely for the preservation of one's 
honour." Dicastillo, De Justitia, Lib. 2. Tract. 2, Disput. 12. 
Num. 404 ; teaches that " calum.ny, though grounded on abso- 
lute falsities, is not a mortal sin against either justice or charity." 
Which doctrine, he affirms in corroboration, is solemnly maintain- 
ed by a cloud of the Jesuit vrriters, by whole universities, by the 
priestly confessors to the German Imperial family ; by all the 
professors in the universities of Vienna, Gratz, and Prague ; and 
by many other of the highest ecclesiastical dignitaries whom he 
particularly designates. 

Falsehood. — Every variety of mendacious practice is approved 
by all the Jesuit authors. If they had zealously endeavoured 
to evince the truth of the Apostle Paul's prediction, 2 Thess. 2 : 

11, that Popery w^as "a lie," they could not more effectually 
have accomplished that object, than by the course which they 
have adopted to exemplify the spirit and practice of their order. 
The ensuing excerpts are taken at random from the vast mass of 
similar passages which may be found in their most renowned 
and extolled authors.— Lessius De Just. Lib. 2. Cap. 42. Dub. 

12, avers — " The Pope can annul and cancel every possible ob- 
ligation arising from an oath." 

Escobar in his "Moral Theolog." Vol. 1. Lib. 1. Sect. 2. cap. 
7; and Lib. 6. Sect. 2. Cap. 10; thus defines, — "It is lawful to 
dissemble in fhe administration of the sacraments; and for the 
same reason, it is no sin to contract a deceitful marriage, by 
using equivocal expressions to elude the church." — But the 
Council of Trent decreed that the right and full intention of the 
Priest to administer the Sacrament is essential to its reality and 
genuine effects — while Escobar and the Jesuits determine that it is 
lawful to dissemble at the celebration of the Romish ceremonies, 
without the sincere participation of which, as they declare, the 
Sacrament is a nullity. In reference to Matrimony, it is certain, 



JESUITISM. 365 

that the want of intention and the dissimulation combined, both 
which are authorized according to the Jesuit principles and 
practice ; those defects of truth are the grand and prolific sources, 
whence emanates that scandalous and overflowing impurity 
which is one of the most prominent characteristics of the ten 
kingdoms of the Dragon, the Beast, and the false Prophet. 
Blackwell, who Avrote an apology for the wickedness of the 
Jesuit Garnet, who Avas the principal contriver of the English 
Gunpowder Plot, avowed, that " the doctrine of equivocation is 
for the consolation of afflicted Papists, and for the instruction of 
all the godly.'' 

Dissimulation in religion was practised by the Jesuits, and was 
also allowed to the utmost extent, by all their Priests who were 
despatched to Eastern Asia, and to other countries. They pre- 
tended to remain sound Romanists at heart, while they were in- 
dulged and dispensed to manifest a great exterior conformity to 
the idolatrous ceremonial of the Heathens among whom they 
resided. In Malabar and China especially, the nominal converts 
to Popery were permitted to worship their images, provided 
they would secretly carry a crucifix, and, as the Jesuits taught 
them, rightly direct their intention : while those priestly impos- 
tors themselves, to render their Christianity, as they affirmed, 
more congenial to the people, and that they might bind them in 
their vassalage, attempted altogether to conceal the sufferings and 
death of the Redeemer from their pretended disciples. — Magnum 
Bullarium Romanum, vol. 6. page 388. 

Sanchez in his Oper. Moral. Part 2, Book 3, Chap. 6, thus 
determines — " A man may swear that he hath not done a thing, 
though he have, by understanding to himself, any particular day, 
or before he was born — and that is frequently of great conveni- 
ence, and is always justifiable, when it is necessary or advanta- 
geous to his health, honour or estate." — Which doctrine is sustain- 
ed by Filiutius in his Tract. 25. Chap. 11. "The intention," 
says that Jesuit,, ** regnlates the quality of the action ; and there- 
fore a man lies not though he say, I swear that I have not done 
such a thmg^ if he adds ii a wbfeper to himself, * this day;"* or 



366 JESUITISM. 

if he pronounces aloud, ' I swear,' then mentally inserts, * I 
say,^ and afterwards proceeds aloud, * that I have not done such 
a thing ;' or if he has an intention to give his discourse that 
sense which a prudent man would attach to it." According to 
which principles, a person may secretly speak the truth, but 
openly falsify and sw^ear to untruths before all other persons 
without criminality. 

Escobar in his Moral Theology, Vol. I, Book 2, Sect. 2, 
Chap. 6 ; presents us the following rules for the administration 
of justice, — " A judge may lawfully take a sum of money to 
give sentence for which party he pleases, when both have equal 
right." — " If a judge receives a bribe to pass a just sentence, he 
is bound to restore it : because he is bound to do justice \vithout 
a bribe ; but if the judge be bribed to pass an unjust sentence, he 
is not obliged in conscience to make any restitution." — Molina 
also in the first volume of his works, Tract. 2, Disput. 88, incul- 
cates the same ungodly dogma. " Judges may receive presents 
from the parties in a suit, if they make them from friendship or 
gratitude for the justice which has been done them ; or to oblige 
them to do it for the future, or to engage them to take particular 
care and despatch their business." 

Frauds in business andperjuri/Sireiiiiis categorically taught. — 
•' It is laAvful for a man to use false weights ; and if he be charged 
with it, he may deny it by oath, making use of equivocal ex- 
pressions, when he is interrogated before a Judge." — " May he 
who turns bankrupt, with a safe conscience, retain as much as is 
requisite to maintain himself handsomely, or that he may not 
live meanly? With Lessius, I affirm that he may." — Escobar 
Theolog. Moral. Tract. 1, Ex. 3. Cap. 7. 

Theft. — Lessius in his work on Justice, Book 2, Chap. 12; 
thus affirms — *' It is lawful to steal in necessity." — Tamburin in 
his Explication of the Decalogue, Book 8, Tract. 2, Chap. 2, 
page 205 ; asserts — " A man is not bound to restore what he has 
stolen in small sums, whatever maybe the total amount." — Car- 
denas in his Crisis Theolog. Diss. 23, Chap. 2, Art. 1 ; main- 
tains — " Domestics w^ho secretly steal from their masters, being 



JESUITISM. 367 

rationally persuaded that it is no injustice to them because their 
labor is worth more wages than they receive, commit no crime." 
That dogma is also ratified by Taberna. — Escobar in his Theolog. 
Moral. Vol. 4, Lib. 34, Sub. 2, Prob. 16, teaches, that "A child 
who serves his father may secretly purloin as much as his fa- 
ther would have paid a stranger for his work." In his Univer- 
sal Moral Theology, Book 5, Glaest. 3, Chap. 4, Gordonus de- 
cides — " A w^oman may take the property of her husband for 
gambling, or any other extravagance, and to supply her spiritual 
wants, that she may act like other loonienP In other words, she 
is directed to steal from her family to glut her profligate priestly 
Confessor. — Vasquez, and Castro Palao, Tract. 6 ; and Escobar, 
Tract. 5, Exam. 5, thus determine — " When a man sees a thief 
resolved and ready to rob a poor person, to hinder him he may 
point out some rich man whom he should rob in his stead." — 
Guimenius in his discussion concerning Sins, Proposition 1^, de- 
clares — " That sin is greater which is opposed to the higher vir- 
tue : but theft is opposed to justice which is nobler than chastity; 
Sodomia vero castitati quse est minor." Ergo. 

The Jesuits however are not so fond of being the subject of 
depredations, as they are of teaching others to steal for their 
emolument. In the Lettres Provinciales, Pascal narrates the 
following fact illustrative of Jesuitism. John D'Alba, a servant 
at the Clermont Monastery, being " rationally persuadcd^^ that 
his compensation was insufficient, stole that which he considered 
the amount of the deficiency ; of course presuming that he might 
safely practice their own rules which they had taught him. In- 
stead of which the Jesuits procured his arrest for the felony. 
Upon his trial D'Alba confessed that he had stolen a few pewter 
plates, but pleaded in justification the doctrine of Bauny, duly 
attested by another Jesuit who had initiated him into those " cases 
of conscience ;" one of which was this, that as he was not suffi- 
ciently paid, he might purloin the remainder without guilt. The 
Judge gave the following sentence. — " The prisoner cannot be 
acquitted by the Jesuit authors; for their doctrine is sinful, per- 
nicious, and contrary to all laws natural, divine, and human, con- 



368 JESUITISM. 

founding all honesty, and authorizing domestic unfaithfulness 
and fraud. It is therefore ordered, that D' Alba shall be whipped 
at the gate of the monastery by the common executioner ; that 
at the same time and place all the writings of those Jesuits upon 
the subject of theft shall be burnt;" and the Jesuits were prohib- 
ited from again inculcating such knavery upon pain of death. 

Murder. — Henriquez in his Sum of Moral Theology, vol. 1, 
Book 14, Chap. 10; says — "A Priest w^ho commits adultery 
with a woman is not criminal, if he kills her husband who as- 
sails him." — Airault, Page 319, thus teaches — " If a person at- 
tempts to ruin my reputation by calumny, and I can avoid the 
injury by directly killing him, may I do it ? Certainly, you may 
fitly kill him, not publicly, but in secret, to avoid scandal." — 
Guimenius in his seventh proposition, affirmed — " You may 
charge your opponent with false crimes to take away his credit, 
as well as kill him." The ensuing fact from Basnage's History, 
Book 1, Chap. 7, presents a striking example of Guimenius' 
principle in practice. — "At the time of the Parisian Massacre, 
when all the Huguenots were doomed to death, two Papists were 
fighting near one of the Masshouses in Paris, when the weakest 
of the combatants upbraided his fellow with the name of Lu- 
theran! A crowd soon rushed out from Mass, and the wretched 
creature, who knew no more of Lutheranism than he did of evan- 
gelism, was instantly butchered. A prior of one of the neigh- 
bouring monasteries who attempted to appease the tumult was 
denounced as his accomplice, and was instantly assassinated." — 
Filiucius in his second volume, Tract. 29, Chap. 3 ; affirms — *' A 
man may kill a false accuser, the witnesses produced by him, 
and the judge himself " — Molina, Vol. 3, Disput. 16, avers — "It 
is lawful to kill any man to save a crown." With which deci- 
sion, Taberna in his Practical Theology, Part 2, Chap. 27, per- 
fectly coincides. — Fegeli in his Practical Questions, Part 4, 
Chap. 1, Quest. 7, Num. 8, avows — " It is not sin for parents to 
wish the death of their children, or to desire the death of any one 
who troubles the Roman Church." — The next proposition i^ 
from Dicastillo, Book 2, Tract 1, Disput, 10, Dub. L Num. 15. 



JESUITISM. 369 

" If a man becomes a nuisance to society, the son may lawfully 
kill his father.'' — Escobar in his Moral Theology, V 1. 4, Lib. 
31, Sect. 2, Precept. 4, Prob. 5, avers — "Children are obliged 
to denounce their parents or relatives for heresy, although the}'- 
know that they will be burnt ; or they may starve them to death, 
or kill them, as enemies who violate the rights of humanity." — 
Gobat in his Moral Works, Vol. 2, Part. 2, Tract. 5, Cap. 9, 
Sec. 8, declares — *' A son who inherits great wealth by the death 
of his father may rejoice, that when he was intoxicated, he mur- 
dered his father." — Busenbaum and Lacroix, Moral Theology, 
Vol. 1, Page 295, proclaim — " In all cases where any man has 
a right to kill a person, if affection moves, another may do it for 
him." 

Infanticide.- — Airault in his Propositions ; Marin in his The- 
ology, Tract. 23 ; Navarrus, Arragona, Bannez, Henriquez, 
Sa, Sanchez, Castro Palao, Diana, Egidius, and many other 
Jesuits, not only palliate, but in many specified cases absolutely 
enjoin the most unnatural and inhuman modes of destroying 
children ; under the pretext of preserving female reputation, and 
especially to conceal the infamy of Monks and Nuns. 

Regicide. — La Croix in his first volume Page 294; declares, 
*' A man condemned by the Pope may be killed wherever he is 
found." — Mariana in his Reg. Institut. Lib. 1. Cap. 7, thus de- 
cides — " A tyrant may be killed by open force and arms ; but it 
is prudent to use frauds and stratagems, because it may be done 
with less public and private danger. Hence, it is lawful to take 
away his life by every possible art." 

It is a very important consideration in connexion with this 
topic, that the Jesuits enacted the following rule — " No volume 
shall be published by any of the members without the approba- 
tion of the Superiors." — Provincial Letters 5, 9 : whence it fol- 
lows, that the whole order are responsible for every dogma con- 
tained in any works of the Jesuits, unless it has been expressly 
condemned. From which fact, as combined with the preceding 
testimonies, which are extracted from the works of the most re- 
nowned Jesuit authors, it is most manifest ; that Modern Popery 



370 JESUITISM. 

is grossly immoral and inexpressibly corrupting ; that it destroys 
all sense of reciprocal obligation ; that it injures civil society 
through all its ramifications ; that it is totally incompatible with 
public order and all righteous government ; that it is destructive 
of domestic confidence and national safety: and consequently 
that a system, the principal characteristic of which is this — that 
it teaches and fosters every species of iniquity, and " trains up 
youth to villany by rule ;" ought not to be tolerated in any civil- 
ized nation, and much less, among a people denominated and pro- 
fessing to be Christians. 

Danger of Jesuitism, — The Popedom, it is now supposed, 
numbers one hundred and twenty millions of vassals, with four 
hundred thousand active Priests, every\vhere scattered, having 
but one chief; for w^hom respect increases by distance. Irish 
and American Priests are more obsequious to the Roman Pon- 
tiff, than the German or French Ecclesiastics. He is the head 
of that immense family of traitorous spies, and of that univer- 
sally present ecclesiastical militia. He numbers more minions 
than any other sovereigns. They have subjects only in their 
own-territory; the Pope claims them in all countries. They 
only command the exterior homage ; the Pope rules the interior, 
and penetrates the heart, for conscience is the seat of his empire. 
If the whole world were papal, he would control the world; 
being directly served by millions of priests devoted to the wor- 
ship of him, as supreme. That powder, as it already in former 
ages in Europe has disturbed, would shake the universe. 

In Ireland, Holland, and the United States, all Roman afl^airs 
are managed by vicars apostolic, as in countries regulated by 
missions. That system is highly approved at Rome, because it 
supplies the means of that court being everyAvhere sovereign. — 
The Priests of the United States, like those of Ireland, are ex- 
tremely devoted to the Pope. They are very rigorous in their 
exactions. In due time, thei/ will embarrass the government of 
the United States, as those of Ireland have disconcerted the 
British Government, and as those of Holland have troubled their 
sovereign. In all the course of the Jesuits, there is something 



JESUITISM. S71 

SO unmanageable, that their proceedings should be terminated at 
once, by decided opposition. 

We may however rejoice, that America advances toward Eu- 
rope w^ith the social contract, constitutional order, and the liberty 
of the press in her hand, inviting the old w^orld to imitate her 
example and enjoy her privileges. In spite of all their efforts, 
the Jesuits can easier extinguish the sun in his brightness, than 
put out the new light which now irradiates the world. They 
can stop the course of the morning star, rather than arrest that 
start to improvement which the human family have taken ; and 
the project of the Jesuits to recover universal supremacy, cannot 
be accomplished w^ithout the prior destruction of mankind, with 
their intellectual illumination, and the sensibilities of their 
hearts. 

Nevertheless; human society is fearfully menaced by the 
atrocious revival of the order of Jesuits ; and by the introduction 
of its principles, which engender and promote every private and 
public collision and disorder. Away with Jesuitism. — De 
Pradt, Jesuitisme Ancien et Moderne. 

Our country is in jeopardy. We have in our midst a dark 
insidious and treacherous enemy, who is endeavouring to elevate 
himself on the overthrow^ of our freedom, and the extermination 
of Christianity. " Unless all the Ministers of the Gospel aw^ake 
from their dreamy confidence and false charity, and rouse their 
energies to a universal and persevering opposition to that artful, 
insinuating, and dangerous traitor, the Popish Priesthood; ere 
long we may realize the terrors, cruelties, tortures, and massa- 
cres w^hich our ancestors endured. Therefore, blow the trum- 
pet of alarm, cry mightily against the abominations of the secret 
places ; and fervently pray, that God would accomplish his prom 
ise, and * consume the mystery of iniquity and the working of 
Satan, w^ith the spirit of his mouth, and with the brightness of 
his coming.' " 



CHAPTER VII. 

"THE WOMAN DRUNKEN WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS.^* 

Heresy — Papal laws against Heresy— Corpus Juris Canonici — Decretals of 
Pope Gregory IX.—'' Liber Sexlas"^ of the Decretals by Pope Boniface 
VIII. — Constitutions of Pope Clement V. — Extravagants of Pope John 
XXII. — Institutes of the Canon Law — Directory for Inquisitors — Papal 
Bulls and Rescripts — Acts of Councils. — Persecutions. — Wars — Treasons 
— Massacres — Historical Illustrations. 

Among the prophetical delineations of Popery, its character- 
istic attributes, the idolatry and iilthiness of that direful system 
are not less lucidly displayed or more graphically correct, than the 
sanguinary spirit of persecution which is an inseparable part of 
the Roman Apostacy. That blood-stained feature of the pontifi- 
cal hierarchy is the necessary consequence of its presumptuous 
and impious arrogance ; for who does not merit the highest curse 
that refuses subordination to that authority and wisdom which 
God has delegated to his Vicegerent ? That the claim itself is 
not less wicked in principle than it has been mischievous in re- 
sult, has already been demonstrated ; it therefore only remains to 
elucidate its maxims and proceedings. 

In the Papal code, the highest crime of which any person 
can be guilty, is that which is denominated " heresy," which, in 
the canon law, Chapter Vergent, "de hereticis,'^ is defined to be 
**lses8e crimen majestatis divine, the highest treason against 
God," Therefore, in every Popish country, and by all Roman 
legislation, when a man is charged with offences against the 
state, and with disobedience to the church, no regard is paid to 
the allegations respecting the civil delinquencies, until the eccle- 
siastical cause is dismissed. Temporal destruction and eternal 
wo are the punishments appointed against heretics, or per- 
sons who refuse to submit to the Papal infallibility and supre- 
macy. 



373 

The general doctrines which are comprised in the Papal Ca- 
nons and Decretals, may thus concisely be specified ; and all the 
inferior potentates who acknowledged the sway of the court of 
Rome were ever obliged, or voluntarily aided, to enforce the 
anathemas which Pontifical authority proclaims. Heretics — 
which generic term includes all persons who do not submit to 
the Papal yoke — Heretics are denounced as infamous. — All in- 
tercourse with them is interdicted. — The protection of the law, 
and the claims of equity are denied to them. — All promises, 
compacts, and oaths made with them, are declared null. — They 
are rendered incapable of any office. — Their property is doomed 
to confiscation. — They are adjudged to be worthy only of ling- 
ering and the most excruciating tortures, and when nature can 
no more bear the suffering, or barbarity can no longer be grati- 
fied, then the fire terminates the anguish of the victim, and the 
triumph of the Priestly tormenters. 

In the Corpus Juris Canonici, Part II. of the Decretals, 
Cause 24, the ensuing dogmas and practice are enacted. 

Question 1. — Omnis hereticus, &c. Every heretic either 
adopts a heresy already condemned, or invents a new one ; but 
he who follows a condemned error, is a partaker of that anathe- 
ma. — Chap. 10. The Roman faith destroys all heresy, and 
tolerates none; Pope Sixtus 11. — Chap. 11. The Roman 
Church admits no heresy, for the Catholic religion must be 
kept without spot; Pope Eusebius. — Chap. 15. It is permitted 
neither to think nor to teach otherwise than the court of Rome 
directs; Pope Marcellus. — Chap. 18. The Holy Spirit is not 
received out of the Unity of the Holy Church. — Chap. 22. 
The Lord accepts sacrifice from the church alone ; Pope Gre- 
gory. — Chap. 26. Intercourse with heretics must be shunned. — 
Chap. 27. He who is separated from the church can neither 
have his sins pardoned, nor can he enter the kingdom of hea- 
ven. — Chap. 32. They who act contrary to the peace of the 
Church, should be divested of all honour ; Pope Liberius. — Chap. 
86. They are not to be deemed anathema who are excommu- 
aicated by heretics; Pope Nicholas. — Chap. 42. It is better to 
32 



374 *[ THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

suffer death, than to hold communion with heretics; Pope 
Gregory. 

Question 2. — "Post mortem, &c. After death nothing avails 
to excommunicate or absolve." — Chap. 1. No man can be ab- 
solved by the church after death ; Pope Leo. — Chap. 2. The 
church can bind or loose the living, not the dead; Pope Gela 
sius. — Chap. 5. The sentence of incorrigible damnation cannot 
be loosed ; Pope Leo. — Chap. 6. Heretics may be excommuni- 
cated after death. Several Popes and Synods assent to that pro- 
position. The cause of denying their own prior established 
dogma was this ; that they could not confiscate the property of 
a dead man under any pretext, until they had excommunicated 
him as a heretic. 

Question 3. — " Pro peccato alicujus, &c. For the sins of the 
parent, the whole family may be excommunicated." The Popes 
attempted to confirm that iniquitous dogma, by the examples of 
Sodom, Genesis 19 ; of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, Numbers 
16 ; of the Amalekites, 1 Samuel 15 ; and by the question which 
was proposed to Christ by the Jews, John 9: 2. — Chap. 13. 
Heretics, and those who entice others into error must be excom- 
municated; Pope Pelagius. 

In the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX., Book 5, Title 7, " De 
Hereticis,^^ are the ensuing illustrations respecting heresy "Bnd 
heretics. 

Chap. 1. An unbeliever is not to be believed to the prejudice 
of another ; Pope Stephen. — Chap. 3. A heretic who perseveres 
in his errors will be damned eternally. — Chap. 4. When an 
author is condemned; his writings, books, and works are also 
condemned: Pope Gregory. — Chap. 8. Heretics, and the re- 
ceivers or favourers of them, must be excommunicated ; and they 
must not be buried in the cemetery of the church; Council of 
Lateran. — Chap. 9. Heretics thinking and speaking evil of 
the Sacraments must be excommunicated ; Pope Lucius III. — 
Chap. 10. The property of heretics shall be confiscated for the 
good of the church ; Pope Innocent III. — Chap. 1 1. Advocates 
or notaries, who defend heretics, or assist them by writings or 



375 

deeds, shall be adjudged infamous, and be deprived from their 
office; Pope Innocent III. — Chap. 13. All heretics of every 
name are excommunicated. — The secular powers shall swear to 
exterminate all heretics condemned by the church ; and if they 
do it not, they shall be anathema; and if the temporal potentate 
continues more than one year under the sentence of excommu/ 
nication, the Pope shall give his country to any believers who 
will seize it. — They who take the sign of the cross against her- 
etics, have the same privileges as those who join the Croisade 
to the Holy Land. — Prelates shall annually visit their dioceses, 
and demand of the people upon oath to reveal all heretics, and 
those holding secret assemblies, that the heretics may be con- 
demned; Pope Innocent III. and the Council of Laleran. — 
Chap. 16. They who are bound to heretics are released from 
every obligation ; Pope Gregory IX. 

Title 39. — De Sententia Excommunicaiionis. — Chap. 49. 
All heretics, and those who infringe upon the rights of the 
church, are excommunicated ; Pope Honorius III. 

In the Decretals of Pope Boniface VIII, denominated " Liber. 
Sextus;" Book V. Title 2, " De Hereticis," are the following 
mandates. 

Chapter 5. The excommunicated, and the partakers and asso- 
ciates in their crime, are admissible as witnesses against heretics ; 
Pope Alexander IV. — Chap. 8. Inquisitors may compel the 
heirs of those who favoured heretics, to fulfil the penance en- 
joined by delivering up their goods. — After the death of a man, 
he may be declared a heretic, that his property may be confis- 
cated ; Pope Alexander IV. — Chap. 9. Statute laws of the 
civil power, by which inquisitors of heresy are impeded or pro- 
hibited, are null and void; Pope Urban IV. — Chap. 15. Sons 
of heretics to the second generation cannot hold any ecclesias- 
tical benefice or secular office ; if the father w^as not restored to 
the church before death. Pope Boniface VIII. — Chap. 18. 
The temporal authorities must not resist the prelates and inquisi- 
tors of heresy, but entirely and always obey them. — Chap. 19. 
The property of heretics is confiscated, ipso jure, by right ; but 



376 ** THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

the civil authorities must not seize the goods, unless by order of 
the ecclesiastical Judge ; Pope Boniface VIII. — Chap. 20. In 
cases of heresy, the evidence of accusers and witnesses shall not 
be published ; Pope Boniface VIII. 

In the Constitutions of Pope Clement V., commonly called 
the Clementine Constitutions, Book 5, Title 3, " De Hereticis,'* 
are three chapters of a similar purport with the preceding quo- 
tations. The third section is expressly devoted to the condem- 
nation of the German Beghards and Beguins, in the usual style 
of Papal anathemas. 

The Extravagants or Constitutions of Pope John XXIL, 
Book 5, Title 3, " De Hereticis," explain the Romish practice 
by the authority of Popes Benedict XL and John XXIL, ac 
cording to the injunctions of their predecessors, so as to transfer 
still more exclusive authority respecting heretics and their pre- 
tended errors, into the hands of the Pontiff, and his immediate 
ecclesiastical Inferiors. 

In the fourth book of the Institutes of the Canon Law, which 
comprises the essential principles of the Pope's usurped prerog- 
atives: Title 4, discusses the question — "Who are heretics, and 
who schismatics, and how do they differ?" In reply the subse- 
quent positions are announced. " Schismatics may be punished 
by excommunication, deposition, confiscation of goods, and the 
rendering void all their acts. — Heretics are divested of every ec- 
clesiastical privilege, and must be punished by the secular 
power. — The goods of heretics after sentence must be confis- 
cated. — The portion of a wife shall not be confiscated for the 
heresy of her husband, unless she wilfully married a heretic. — 
After death also the property of heretics may be confiscated. — 
Heretics shall not be interred in ecclesiastical ground; and 
they who so bury them, shall be excommunicated, and not be ab- 
solved, before they have taken the corpse from the earth.- — 
Those suspected of heresy, unless they purge themselves, shall 
be excommunicated. — Descendants of heretics to the second de- 
gree shall not hold any ecclesiastical benefice." 

All the above Decretals, Constitutions, Institutes, and Canons 



377 

remain in full authority, wherever Popery sways ; and are ever 
enforced when it can be done with impunity, either privately in 
the Confessional, or by the secular power. 

In addition to the above dogmas which are proclaimed in the 
" Corpus Juris Canonici,''^ there is another volume thus entitled 
— " Directorium Inquisitorum F. N. Eymerici Ordinis Prae- 
dicatorum. Cum Commentariis Franc. Pegnae, Sac. Palat. Au- 
ditoris." With this inscription — "Ad S. D. N. Gregorium XIII. 
Pont. Max." Beneath is the picture of an ostrich, w^ith part 
of an iron horse-shoe in its mouth, encircled by the motto, 
" Nil Durum Indigestum. Cum Consensu Superiorum." It 
commences with Pegna's dedication to Pope Gregory XIII. 
Then follows that Pontiff's approbation of the w^ork ; to which is 
subjoined Pegna's address to the Cardinals Inquisitors ; and the 
volume is closed with these words ; that the volume was finished 
and published at Rome in October 1584, "Jussu Rev. Dom. 
Cardinalium Inquisitorum General, inunivers. Rep. Christiana; 
by the command of the Cardinals Inquisitors General." 

A few sentences which have already been cited from the 
" Corpus Juris Canonici" are repeated, expressly to demonstrate 
that the Papal dogmas, however revolting, are not a dead letter, 
and propositions in books only ; but that they are permanent 
rules of action, and a code of laws ever in operation, where 
those dreadful enactments can be enforced. 

The volume is divided into two distinct collections. One is 
the Directory of the duties appertaining to the Inquisitors in three 
parts. The second treatise contains the bulls, or letters of twenty 
different Pontiffs concerning the office of the Inquisition. 

Directory for the Inquisitors. Parti. — Omnes Christi fideles, 
&c. All believers in Christ, by the necessity of salvation, are 
subject to the Roman Pontiff, who carries the two swords, and 
judges all, but he is judged by no man. We declare, say, de- 
fine, and pronounce, that subjection to the Roman Pontiff is ne- 
cessary to salvation. Boniface VI II. Bull. Unam Sanctam. — 
Another decree was issued by tjie same Pope in 1302, which 
authoritatively repeated as articles of faith — 1. "There is one 
32* 



378 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

Catholic and Apostolic church, and one governor of it, the Ro- 
man Pontiff, to whom all are subject. — 2. The Pope hath both 
swords, temporal and spiritual. — 3. All are to be judged by the 
Pope, but he by none." Direct. Inquis. Pages 34, 35. 

Directory for the Inquisitors. Part II. Chapter 2. — " He is 
convicted of erring from the faith, who does not reclaim others 
from error." Pope Leo, page 87. 

" Every obstinate heretic will partake of eternal fire with the 
devil and his angels." — " When an author is condemned his writ- 
ings and books also are condemned." — Gregory, Pages 89, 145. 

Proscribed Books. — " Inquisitors must not permit the reading 
of prohibited books. — Confessors must not absolve those who 
keep books which are condemned. — He who writes books of 
heresy shall be adjudged a heretic. — He who retains prohibited 
books shall be deemed a favourer of heretics." — Pages 92, 93. 

" Heretics, and the receivers and favourers of them, are ex- 
communicated, and dying in their sin, shall not be buried in the 
graveyard." — Council of Lateran. — Pages 96, 101, 193, 371. 

" The property of heretics shall be confiscated, and be applied 
to the use of the church."— Pope Innocent III. — Pages 98, 110. 

'* Advocates or notaries favouring heretics or their defenders, 
or defending their causes, or writing for them legal instruments, 
shall be accounted infamous, and be suspended from their func- 
tion." — Pope Innocent III., Page 99. 

*' All heretics of every name are excommunicated." — Council 
of Lateran, Page 101. 

" They who are bound to heretics are released from every ob- 
ligation." — Pope Gregory IX., Pages 103, 166. 

'* They who bury persons knowing them to be excommuni- 
cated, or their receivers, defenders, or favourers, shall not be ab- 
solved unless they dig up the corpse ; and the place shall be de- 
prived of the usual immunities of sepulture." — Pope Alexander 
IV., Page 104. 

" Ordinaries or their delegates, and Inquisitors, without the 
penalty of excommunication, may execute justice upon heretics, 
if they^ have secular jurisdiction in the place." — Pope Alexan- 
der IV.. Pago 105. 



r 



WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS.'* 379 

"Statutes that impede the execution of the duties which apper- 
tain to the office of Inquisitors are null and void." — Pope Ur- 
ban ly., Page 106. 

"All heretics andAose who infringe upon the immunities of 
the church, are excommunicated." — Pope Honorius III., Page 
118. 

" From the beginning of the Papacy, it was the ancient cus- 
tom to promulgate laws against heretics. Heretics were excom- 
municated thrice, annually. Anathemas and Indulgences are of 
antiquated date."-— Pope Clement IV^., Page 131, 132. 

" All sects of heretics are condemned, and various punish- 
ments are appointed for themselves and their accomplices." — - 
Pope Alexander IV., Page 135. 

" Inquisitors must discard all fear, and intrepidly proceed 
against heretical pravity." — Pope Clement IV., Page 136. 

" He is a heretic who deviates from any article of faith." — 
Page 143. 

*' He who is without the church can neither be reconciled nor 
saved." — Page 144. ^ 

" A heretic may be accused and condemned after death." — 
Page 146. 

"A heretic possesses nothing alive or dead." — " No fellow- 
ship should be maintained with the excommunicated." — Page 
146, 147. 

" He is a heretic who does not believe what the Roman Hie- 
rarchy teaches. — A heretic merits the pains of fire. — By the 
Gospel, the canons, civil law, and custom, heretics must be burn- 
ed."— 148, 169. 

" The property of heretics after their death shall be seized. — 
No part of that property shall be given to their heirs except for 
the sake of mercy."— Page 151, 172. 

" All defence is denied to heretics." — Page 153. 

** For the suspicion alone of heresy, purgation is demanded." 
—Page 156. 

"Heretics are by tight condemned." — Page 157. 

** Magistrates who refuse to take the. oath for defence of the 



380 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

the faith, shall be suspected of heresy. — The cause why it is 
not now taken as formerly is the power of the heretics, which 
deters the prelates. — It must be required of temporal lords to ex- 
pel heretics. — The Diocesan may command the seizure by JPa- 
pists of the property belonging to rebels against the church. — 
The church may demand the aid of the secular power against 
both things and persons." — Page 159, 176. 

" Wars may be commenced by the authority of the church. — 
Indulgences for the remission of all sin belong to those who are 
signed with the cross for the persecution of heretics." — Page 
IGO. 

*' All diligence must be used to extirpate heretics." — Page 164. 

*' The Pope can enact new articles of faith. — The defini- 
tions of Popes and Councils are to be received as infallible." — 
Page 168. 

" No person shall favour heretics." — Page 173. 

*' Positive laws bind not the Pope." — Page 174. 

"Every individual may kill a heretic." — Page 175. 

" All persons may attack any rebels to the church, and despoil 
them of their wealth ; and slay them, and burn their houses and 
cities." — Pages 176, 177. Text and Glossa. 

" Those who are signed with the cross enjoy those privileges 
and indulgences even in the time of peace, which were granted 
to them by Pope Urban IV."— Pages 129, 177, 684. 

*' Persons who betray heretics shall be rewarded. — But Priests 
who give the sacrament or burial to heretics shall be excommu- 
nicated. — Page 178. 

" Prelates are called watchmen because they persecute heretics. 
— They who favour their relatives who are heretics, shall not 
receive for that cause any milder punishment."— Page 180. 

'* Heretics cannot be condemned by the secular judge. — The 
penalty of perpetual incarceration may be mitigated by the In- 
quisitors."— Page 181. 

** Those Vv^ho are subject to a master or governor, or prince, 
who has become a heretic, are released from their fidelity. — A 
wife may separate herself from her excommunicated or heretical 



381 

husband. — Children of heretics are discharged from parental 
authority."— Page 182. 

"Heretics may be forced to profess the Roman faith.*' — 
Page 193. 

" The crime of heresy is not extinguished by death." — 
Page 196. 

" The testimony of a heretic is admitted on behalf of a Papist, 
but not against him." — Page 198. 

" A whole city must be burnt on account of the heretics who 
live in it. — Whoever pleases may seize and kill any heretics." — 
Page 199. 

" A person who is suspected of heresy, unless he purge himself 
shall be esteemed a heretic. — If he thus be excommunicated 
during one year, he shall then be condemned as a heretic." — 
Page 200. 

" Witnesses in a cause of heresy may be forced to bear testi- 
mony, and they sin mortally if they abscond." — Page 204. 

" A heretic, as he sins in all places, may everywhere be judged. 
— Those who escape from prison shall be deemed heretics. — In- 
quisitors alone can divest a person of his secular offices." — 
Page 207. - * 

" A person contracting marriage with a heretic shall be pun- 
ished, because it is favouring a heretic." — Page 210. 

*' Heretics must be sought after, and be corrected or extermi- 
nated. — Heretics enjoy no privileges in law or equity." — Page 
212. 

** The goods of heretics are to be considered as confiscated 
from the perpetration of the crime. — All alienations of property 
by heretics before their condemnation are invalid. — Inquisitors 
are not bound to restore the price of the property which is seized 
in the hands of those who purchased from heretics." — Page 213, 

*' Prelates or Inquisitors may torture witnesses to obtain the 
truth."— Page 218. 

" Heretics persevering in error must be delivered to the secu- 
lar Judge. — Page 221. 

Directory for the Inquisitors. — From page 230 to 388 is a 



382 " THE WOMAN DRUNKEN i 

section thus entitled ; " Gluestiones Q,uinquaginta octo de here- 
tica pravitate ad ofRcium Inquisitionis pertinentes. Fifty-eight 
questions belonging to the office of the Inquisition concerning 
heretical depravity." 

The sections 1 to 29 comprise a full discussion of all the 
alleged heresies which then had been known and were in exist- 
ence, beginning with Aristotle and the ancient philosophers. 
Then follow the Jews the Beghards ; the Lombards ; the Mani- 
chees : the Waldenses ; the Fratricelli ; the Greeks : the Tartars ; 
the Turks ; the Saracens ; and finally, all the books which in 
any form contain their errors. After which is subjoined the 
practical application of the preceding anathemas. 

" A heretic is he who acts against the Roman court, and en- 
deavours to take away their dignity." — Page 318. 

The forty-first and ensuing questions advert to Blasphemers ; 
Diviners; to those vvho worship Demons; relapsed Jews; and 
Infidels. 

*' The Pope has power over infidels. — The church may 
make war with infidels. — In causes of heresy, the ecclesiastical 
Judge is to try, and the secular Judge to execute." — Page 352 ; 
and the Glossa, " Non obstantibus ;" Page 357. 

" Monks and Priests who contract matrimony shall be sus- 
pected of heresy." — Page 367. 

" Those who hinder the Inquisitors from executing their office 
are excommunicated. — All those who obstruct the Inquisitors 
are to be proceeded against as favourers of heretics." — Page 374. 

" Those who are strongly suspected are to be reputed as here- 
tics."— Page 376. 

*' He who does not inform against heretics shall be deemed as 
suspected. — He who contracts marriage twice shall be suspected 
of heresy. — He who marries a person unbaptized, and deserts 
her to marry a baptized woman, is not guilty of bigamy. — The 
Priest who solicits a woman to sin at confession shall be judged 
as suspected of heresy." — Page 383. 

" They who relapse into heresy shall be delivered to the secu- 
lar power for punishment." — Page 385. 



383 

Directory for the Inquisitors. Part III. — The first forty pages 
of the third part are filled with forms for the various processes 
connected with the Inquisitorial proceedings. After which is a 
chapter concerning the modes by which heretics attempt to con- 
ceal their alleged errors ; with cautions for the inquisitors, and 
rules for discovery of the prisoner's heart and conscience, 
fraught with all that astounding artifice and duplicity, of which 
the narratives given by persons who have published their ex- 
perience in the dungeons of that execrable institution, furnish a 
practical and lucid commentary. Almost one hundred additional 
pages are devoted to the forms and modes which are adopted in 
the various latter processes until the definitive sentence is issued 
for the delivery of their victim to be roasted by the civil govern- 
ment : for Papal Ecclesiastics hypocritically pretend, that their 
profession forbids them from being engaged in any measures 
which affect the limbs or lives of mankind. 

The directory is closed by a long chapter with this title — 
*' Gluestiones centumtriginta super practica officii Inquisitionis 
eidem officio congruentis — One hundred and thirty questions 
upon the duties of the Inquisition." From them a few speci- 
mens are cited upon the most important topics. 

Question 12. *' Inquisitors are not bound to give a reason to 
Prelates concerning things appertaining to their office." — 
Page 542. 

Question 22. " Inquisitors without danger of excommunica- 
tion may summon temporal dignitaries who are excommunica- 
ted."— Page 552. 

Question 23. *' An Inquisitor and his associate may mutually 
absolve each other from excommunication." — Page 553. 

Question 32. "An Inquisitor may force the governors of 
cities to swear that they will defend the church against heretics." 
—Page 560. 

Question 33. " An Inquisitor may compel or admonish tem- 
poral lords, having jurisdiction, before they enter upon thefr 
government, to swear that they will extirpate all heretics from 
their dominions to the extent of their power," — Page 56 L 



384 ** THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

Question 35. *' An Inquisitor may proceed against temporal 
lords who deny the assistance required by him, or who do not 
obey him as they ought." — Page 562. 

Question 36. '* Inquisitors may proceed against all those who 
impede them in the execution of their office." — Page 563. 

Question 43. " Inquisitors may proceed against the dead, who 
before or after their death were reported to them as guilty of he- 
retical pravity." — Page 570. 

Question 56. " Inquisitors may proceed to execute their office 
with an armed force." — Page 583. 

Question 57. "Inquisitors, to seize heretics or their favourers, 
may demand the aid of the civil authority." — Page 585. 

Question 58. " Inquisitors may have a prison for the guilty, 
and for those who are accused to them, there to be detained or 
punished." — Page 585. 

Question 59. " Prelates and Inquisitors may have a common 
jail for their prisoners." — Page 587. 

Question 61. " Prelates and Inquisitors may put any persons 
to the question by torture " — Page 591. ''There are five de- 
grees of torture ; or as Paul Grillandus writes, fourteen species." 
— " It is laudable to torture those of every class who are guilty 
of heresy." — " Common fame and one witness are sufficient to 
justify the torture." — Common fame alone, or one witness alone, 
authorizes the torture." — Some of the Protestant churches do 
not seem to be aware that their judicial rules and practice in re- 
ference to ecclesiastical proceedings founded upon common fame, 
are exact transcripts from the code of the Inquisition. They are 
among the most unjust and cruel portions of that execrable Domi- 
nican " working of Satan," by which the Papal Inquisitors be- 
came " drunk with the blood of the saints, and the blood of the 
martyrs of Jesus." — "Extrajudicial confession, which is reiter- 
ated under torture, must be considered as a ratification." — Pages 
504 to 599. 

Question 62. " Inquisitors may coerce witnesses to swear that 
they will testify to the truth, and should frequently examine 
them."— -Page 600. 



885 

Question 65. *' Inquisitors may lawfully admit perjured per* 
•ons to testify and act in cases concerning the faith." — Page 605. 

Question 66. *' Inquisitors may lawfully receive infamous 
persons, and criminals, or servants against their masters, both to 
act and give evidence in causes respecting the faith." — Page 606. 

Question 68. " An Inquisitor must not admit a heretic to tes- 
tify in a cause of faith against or for a believer." — Page 61 1. 

Question 69. ** Inquisitors may allow heretics to witness 
against heretics, but not for them." — Page 612. 

Question 73. *' Inquisitors may torture witnesses to obtain the 
truth; and punish them if they have given false evidence." — 
Page 622. 

Question 74. " Inquisitors may cite and coerce the attendance 
of witnesses, and also persons charged with heretical pravity in 
different diocesses." — Page 626. 

Question 75, *' Inquisitors must not publish the names of in- 
formers, witnesses, and accusers." — Page 627. 

Question 87. ** Prelates and Inquisitors are bound to force 
those who are suspected to abjure the heresy imputed to them." 
—Page 637. 

Question 93. " Penitent heretics may be condemned to per- 
petual imprisonment." — Page 641. 

Question 98. *' Prelates and Inquisitors ought without delay 
to deliver an impenitent person guilty of heretical pravity to the 
secular power for the final punishment." — Page 646. 

Question 99. *' Prelates and Inquisitors without delay should 
deliver a person who has relapsed into heretical pravity to the 
civil authority for condign punishment." — Page 646. 

Question 103. " Inquisitors may impose as a commutation for 
other punishment, a suitable pecuniary mulct." — Page 648. 

Question 108. "Inquisitors may provide for their own expen- 
ditures, and the salaries of their officers, from the property of 
heretics." — Page 652. 

Question 110. "Prelates or Inquisitors may confiscate the 
property of all impenitent heretics, or of persons relapsed."— ??^.^ 
Page 662. 

33 



3|||j^ "THE WOMAN DRITNKEN 

Question 114. "Prelates and Inquisitors must deprive here- 
tics, and all who believe, receive, defend, and favour them, and 
their sons to the second generation, of every ecclesiastical bene- 
fice and public office." — Page 669. 

Question 118. " Inquisitors may coerce those who have pre- 
sumed to offer for interment in ecclesiastical premises, heretics, 
or their receivers, and favourers, publicly with their own hands 
to disinter those bodies, and to cast them out ; or otherwise to 
punish them before they are released from the sentence of excom- 
munication." — Page 675. 

Question 119. *' All persons, who are bound by any debt of 
hom^age or fidelity, or any other covenant, or contract, however 
strongly made, to any person who has manifestly fallen into 
heresy, are not held to fulfil it, but are totally absolved from it." 
— Page 675. 

Question 123. "Receivers, defenders, and favourers of here- 
tics incur the pains of infamy, and other penalties, if they con- 
tinue pertinaciously in the excommunication more than one 
year."— Page 681. 

Question 130. " Inquisitors enjoy the benefits of a plenary in- 
dulgence at all times in life, and in death." — Page 679. 

The whole is ratified by the official declaration. Page 679, 
and 687, that " the Extravagants, which were granted by the 
Chief Pontiffs in favour of the faith, and office of the Inqui- 
sition, still retain all their essential force, and inseparable avr 
thorityP 

Papal Bulls. The second division of the volume is entitled, 
according to the usual Papist "all deceivableness of unright- 
eousness/' — " Literse Apostolicse diversorum summorum Ponti- 
ficum ; Apostolical Letters of various chief Pontiffs." From 
them we cite a few passages to verify, that from the first exhibi- 
tion of open resistance to the despotism of the Roman court, 
until the last fulmination of Pope Gregory XVI., the spirit and 
practice of the Papal tyranny have been identical. The thun- 
ders of the Vatican have not always reverberated with the same 
overflowing noise ; nor have the devastations which they laave 



387 

caused been equally malignant and general; but the will has 
ever been ready to display their direful attributes, when it could 
be done with impunity ; although the power of the adversary 
by divine Providence has latterly been restrained. 

1. Pope Innocent III. — " Prelates are exhorted, diligently to 
endeavour that all heretics shall be excluded from their diocess : 
and also they are enjoined, without the admission of any appeal, 
to coerce and punish those by ecclesiastical discipline, who trans- 
act any business, or permit any familiarity with heretics." Year 
1200. — The same Pope "commands, that they shall be seized 
for trial and penalties, who engage in the translation of the sacred 
volumes, or who hold secret conventicles, or who assume the 
office of preaching without the authority of their superiors; 
against whom process shall be commenced, without any permis- 
sion of appeal." — Year 1215. 

2. Pope Gregory IX. — " We excommunicate and anathe- 
matize all heretics ;" several different appellations are intro- 
duced, but especially " Pauperes de Lugduno, the Poor Man of 
Lyons," as part of the Albigenses, sometimes then were called. 
By that bull, they are utterly deprived of every privilege and 
right of man in society ; and also their friends are doomed to 
the same iniquity. Imprisonment, and confiscation of property, 
and death are awarded for them all ; and their children to 
the second generation are doomed to infamy and degradation." 
Year 1216. — The same Pope Gregory also issued another 
''Apostolical Letter," as the Canonists impiously denominate 
those specimens of ruthless JDarbarism which filled Europe 
with every direful calamity. *' He commanded that suitable 
Inquisitors should be chosen, whose sole employ should be 
to preach and defend Popery ; and who, with their associates, 
should search out heretics, and persons suspected or charged 
with heresy, and admit penitents. They were also appoint- 
ed to judge the receivers, favourers, and defenders of here- 
tics according to the laws enacted against them. Their discus- 
sions concerning doctrines, the Inquisitors were required to hear. 
To all who fought against heretics for twenty days, they were 



388 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

directed to grant indulgences for three years ; and they were 
commanded to direct the questors according to ecclesiastical cen- 
sures ;" in other words, to plunder the heretics to the utmost of 
their power and rapacity. One clause from that bull is so char- 
acteristic of Popery that it must be presented verbatim. *' That 
all persons may more willingly and efficiently execute the duty 
thus committed unto them — to all who, according to the call of 
the Inquisitors, attend to their various stations twenty days — to 
them who afford counsel and favour, and hearty aid in persecute 
ing heretics, and the favourers, receivers, and defenders of them, 
and all other rebels against the church, whether in fortified 
places or castles ; from the mercy of God Almighty, and of the 
blessed apostles Peter and Paul, and by his authority, we relax 
three years of the penance enjoined upon them : and if any per- 
sons shall die during the prosecution of that affair, we grant 
them a full pardon of all their sins ; and we bestow upon the 
brethren the entire faculty of using all means to prosecute the 
work, and of executing ecclesiastical censure upon the refractory 
and flie rebellious." Year 1238. 

3. Pope Innocent IV. — " All temporal lords whom the In- 
quisitors have publicly announced as being under the ban, must 
be compelled to execute their commands by ecclesiastical cen- 
sure." Year 1252. — *' Inquisitors must admonish magistrates, 
to enact statutes and laws against heretics and their accomplices, 
and to enforce the observance of them; and compel the un- 
willing or disobedient, by ecclesiastical censure." Year 1252. — 
"All secular magistrates are enjoined to observe and exe-. 
cute the statutes against heretics and their accessories ; to 
which they must be compelled by the Inquisitors under the 
penalty of ecclesiastical censure." Year 1252. — " All the 
constitutions of Innocent III. against heretics, and their auxili- 
aries, secular magistrates and their officials must observe.** 
Year 1252. — Several other bulls of a similar character were 
issued, extending the application of the principles, and the sev^ 
rity of the requirements. " Inquisitors are exhorted, diligently 
to search out heretics, and their accomplices ; and unless they re- 



WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS.' 389 

tract, to proceed against them according to the canons, to demand 
the aid of the secular power, and to absolve and receive the pen- 
itent. The Pope threatens severely to punish tTiose who obstruct 
the Inquisitors, who are authorized to grant twenty or forty days 
of indulgence for all who assist them to punish heretics." Year 
1252. — "All secular princes and magistrates are commanded to 
execute the ban upon those persons and their property whom the 
Inquisitors have announced to be heretics, or their accomplices." 
Year 1252. — " Inquisitors must compel all secular magistrates, 
under the penalty of ecclesiastical censure, to swear that they 
will execute the laws against heretics, notwithstanding any 
privilege of any kind." Year 1253. — All the edicts of the Em- 
peror Frederick in confirmation of the Papal bulls are also pro- 
nounced valid, and the observance of them is enjoined. — " In- 
quisitors shall preach the Romish faith, and force others to pro- 
claim it. They must receive those signed with the cross, who 
pursue heretics. Inquisitors shall grant to those who attend 
their instructions concerning the faith, twenty or forty days of in- 
dulgence, and also bestow upon them a plenary indulgence." Year 
1254. — There is a rescript of Pope Innocent IV. of the year 1254, 
Vv^hich denounces the punishment of all heretics, and their accom- 
plices ; and which especially sanctions the prior bulls of Popes 
Nicholas III. and Alexander IV. — " Inquisitors must fervently 
preach the word of the cross against heretics and accomplices. 
They must accept those who wish to sign themselves with the 
cross. Every solicited indulgence must be granted to them. 
Process without appeal must be issued against all those who ob- 
struct or who do not aid the Inquisitors, as if they were defend- 
ers and favourers of heretics. Those who are signed w4th the 
cross may be absolved from all ecclesiastical censures. Priests 
signed with the cross may be dispensed with for their irregularity. 
They may change the vows of those signed with the cross. In 
the time even of a general interdict, the Crusaders may partici- 
pate in the ceremonies." Year 1254. — "Inquisitors may com- 
pel secular magistrates to observe all the laws of the Emperor 
Frederick against heretics." Year 1255. 
33* 



390 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

4. Pope Alexander IV. — " Houses of heretics are to be de- 
stroyed, and the materials to be distributed." Year 1255.— 
The clauses of the bull of Pope Innocent IV. for the extirpation 
of heretics, are enlarged and ratified. Year 1255. — That bull 
was repeated in the year 1256. "Prelates and Inquisitors may 
modify or abrogate all statutes by which the office of Inquisitors 
is either directly or indirectly impeded." Year 1257. — The bull 
for the establishment of the Dominicans as permanent Inquisitors 
was issued in 1258. To which was added seven explanatory re- 
scripts concerning their duties, exemptions, privileges, and in- 
junctions upon the secular power to support the tribunal of the 
Inquisition. Year 1258, 1259, and 1260. — During the years 
1260 and 1261, Pope Innocent IV. issued thirteen bulls, com- 
manding all princes and magistrates to aid the Inquisition, and 
denouncing against them the severest ecclesiastical indignation 
and penalties, if they do not comply with the pontifical man- 
damus. 

5. Pope Urban IV. — That Pope immediately after his acces- 
sion to the pontifical throne, issued a most direful anathema 
against all heretics, and the opponents of the Inquisition. Year 
1261. 

6. Pope Clement IV. — " Inquisitors must compel secular ma- 
gistrates of cities and other places, under penalty of the excom- 
munication and interdict, to subscribe and inviolably to keep the 
constitutions of Innocent IV. notwithstanding any indulgence of 
the court of Rome." Year 1265. — That same Pope enlarged 
and sanctioned the edicts of the Emperor Frederick, and the 
Popes Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. Year 1265. 

7. Pope Nicholas IV. — Many punishments were ordered by 
Pope Nicholas to be inflicted upon heretics and their accompli- 
ces ; with a confirmation of the rescripts of the anterior Popes. 
Year 1281. — "A bull was issued by him against the Jews, of a 
similar tenor with those against the other heretics. 

8. Pope Honorius IV. — That Pontiff enacted two laws 
against heretics of the same character as the preceding. Years 
IS85, and 1286. 



^ 391 

9. Pope Clement V. ordered that all the Knights Temp- 
lars should be arrested and their property sequestered for the 
use of the Roman court. Year 1308, 

10. Po'pe John XXII. promulged a long and important 
bull against the Fratricelli, and other rebels to the Papal autho- 
rity in the year 1318; to which were added two other rescripts 
against heretics and their favourers ; with a similar bull in the 
year 1330, against Cesena, Occam, and others, for simulated 
heresy. 

11. Pojpe Gregory XL — Three bulls were promulged by 
that Pope against Raymond LuUus^and all his writings. Year 
1372. 

12. Pope Martin V. — That Pontiff, who was appointed by 
the Council of Constance to execute their woful decrees, after 
his assumption of the pontifical power, with the blasphemous 
titles of " Most Holy and Most Blessed,''^ denounced Wiclif and 
Huss, and others, in a powerful anathema, which combined all 
the iniquitous and sanguinary dogmas and mandates of every 
preceding Pope. Year 1418. — "That Bulla Hussitica, said 
iEneas Sylvius, Pope Pius II., will be rather a subject of admi- 
ration than of belief to all posterity." Letters. 

13. Pope Calistus HI. — By that pontiff all the bulls of Pope 
Innocent IV. were ratified, concerning the proclamation of cru- 
sades, the grant of indulgences, and the processes for punishment. 
Year 1458. 

14. Pope Pius II. — That Pope prior to his elevation to the 
throne had been called ^neas Sylvius ; and had written power- 
fully against the antichristian delusions, pomp, and bloody mind- 
edness of the various orders of the Papal hierarchy. But in the 
year 1463, immediately after his being crowned Pope, he pro- 
mulgated a long retractation of his former works; enjoined 
upon all Papists not to believe his writings as iEneas Sylvius, 
but his infallible rescripts as Pope Pius II. 

15. Pope Innocent VIII. — "Authority is given to all Inqui- 
sitors to proceed against heresy; and especially in upper Ger- 
many." Ye^ir 1484 — To that bull was principally owing the 



^2 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

indescribable massacres of several hundreds of thousands of the 
Waldenses, Bohemian brethren, the Lollards, and others ; who 
under various names rejected, in different degrees, the abomina- 
tions of the Papacy. It was so severe and unlimited, and suc- 
cessful in its operation ; that the complaints of all the objectors 
to the pontifical usurpations were completely and universally 
silenced, from that period during about thirty years, until Luther 
and Zuingle began to resound the trump of rebellion, and the 
declaration of Christian war against the " Dragon and the Beast, 
and the False Prophet." — " Secular Magistrates are commanded 
to execute the sentences of the Inquisitors against heretics in 
every form, under the penalty of excommunication; not daring 
to revise the judgment awarded by Inquisitors against heretics." 
Year 1486. 

16. Pope Leo X. — " No person shall print any books without 
the approbation of the Pontiff, and the Master of the Palace, ot 
the consent of the Inquisitors, under the penalty of losing the 
books, which shall be burnt, and the sentence of excommunica- 
tion." Year 1516. — " No person shall preach without the per- 
mission of his Superior. All preachers shall explain the Gos- 
pel according to the Fathers. They shall not explain futurity 
or the times of Antichrist ! If any person shall act contrary to 
this rescript, he shall for ever be divested of his office as preacher, 
and be excommunicated." Year 1 5 i 6. — Next follows — " Bulla 
Apostolica Leonis Papse X. contra errores Martini Lutheri, et- 
sequacium. Bull of Pope Leo X.^against the errors of Martin 
Luther and his followers." Year 1520. — That bull condemns 
the most important of the evangelical truths which Luiher at 
that time taught as " damnable heresies ;" prohibits Luther's 
tracts : reviles his daring pertinacity ; denies Martin's right of ap- 
peal to a future council as wickedly presumptuous and vain; 
commands Luther not to preach; forbids all person* to read his 
works ; enjoins all Papists to seize him and his associates ; and 
orders that Luther shall be published and denounced as a here- 
tic in every Masshouse in the world." In the same year, 1520, 
followed another bull; in which all the anathemas of the Pope, 



393 

dom were fulminated by that profligate infidel Leo X. against 
the modern Elijah, and his Christian brethren and coadjutors. — 
" Prelates and Inquisitors of heretical pravity must proceed 
against the sacrilegious and evil-doers; and their jurisdiction 
must not be obstructed or diminished. Judges and secular 
officers without revision of process must execute the sentence 
pronounced by ecclesiastical judges upon their crimes, and pun- 
ish those who are delivered to the civil power ; and if they re- 
fuse to comply, they must be compelled by ecclesiastical censure." 
Year 1521. 

17. Pope Adrian VL — Having condemned Martin Luther, 
and having confirmed the sentence of Leo X. to the same effect, 
he denounces him ; and demands that " Frederick the Elector of 
Saxony shall withdraw his protection from that heretic." Year 
1522.—-" Inquisitors and the officials of prelates must diligently 
search out all those who deny the Roman faith, or who destroy 
the images of Saints, or who contemn the Sacraments, or who 
commit other evil works, that they may be punished according 
to the decrees." Year 1523. 

18. Pope Clement VII. — That Pope issued two bulls, the 
former in 1528, and the latter in 1530, concerning the Refor- 
mation; enjoining a crusade against the Protestants, granting 
the warriors the usual privileges of former Pontiffs ; and im- 
parting large powers to Prelates and Inquisitors, '*procedendi 
contra perfidum hereticorum genus, to proceed against the trea- 
cherous race of heretics." ■ 

19. Pope Paul III — Pope Paul reiterated all the antecedent 
bulls respecting the duty of Inquisitors against heretics ; de- 
claring that *' persons who resisted them should be deprived of 
their dignities, and rulers should be despoiled of their lands, and 
all of them be excommunicated." Year 1542. — In the same 
year he promulged a fearful anathema against the Jews : and 
in the year 1543, that Pontiff published an edict against book- 
sellers, printers, and all other persons in that business, in which 
he denounced, that the utmost wrath of the Papacy should be 



394 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

efFased upon all those who print, sell, buy, read, or secrete books 
suspected of heresy." 

20. Pope Julius III. — That Pope issued in 1550, ahull con- 
cerning the proselyting oT the heretics, so that they might be in- 
duced to return to the Roman vassalage ; and a second bull com- 
manding the destruction of all heretical and Lutheran books ; and 
a third bull in 1554, against the Jews and their writings. — Be? 
sides that series of bulls concerning books ; Pope Julius in 1551 
proclaimed a bull against all those Protestants and the reformed 
civil powers, who obstructed the Inquisitors of heretical pravity 
from executing their office. 

21. Pope Paul /F.— That Pontiff in 1558 promulged a 
bull by which he. commanded that " all the laws, decrees, and sta- 
tutes of the Roman Pontiffs and Councils of every age, enacted 
against heretics and schismatics, shall be received and inviolably 
observed, with every thing contained in the extravagants of the 
sovereign Popes. Those which were obsolete are recalled into 
use ; and shall be enforced against all persons, whatever may be 
their authority, honour, and dignitj^ Whoever shall fall into 
heresy or schism, or seduce others to discard the Papal authority, 
shall be deprived of all their offices, benefices, and honours, and 
be rendered disqualified and incapable of them ; and if they are 
judged before they have publicly abjured, they shall be delivered 
to the secular power; and all civil potentates are commanded to 
assist in coercing obedience to the Papal mandates." 

22. Pojpe Pius IV. — " Inquisitors of heretical pravity must 
proceed against all ecclesiastics, and exempt heretics, or other- 
wise suspected or guilty of heresy, when they are not prevented by 
their superiors, whom they must punish according to the canon- 
ical institutes, notwithstanding all constitutions to the contrary." 
Year 1562. — " All licenses to read heretical and prohibited books 
are recalled." — Year 1564. 

23. Pope Pius V. — " No person shall read the books forbid- 
den by the synod of Trent." Year 1564. "Whosoever shall 
obstruct the power, or offend against the dignity, affairs, or per- 
sons of the Inquisitors of heretical pravity, ' anathemate percus- 



395 

sus est, shall be struck with the anathema,' and * rens Isesas ma- 
jestatis, being guilty of high treason,' shall be deprived of all 
dominion and dignity. His children shall be infamous, and 
deprived of all hereditary succession, and right of donation. 
Prelates shall publish this constitution. Secular princes shall 
give all aid to the officers of the Inquisition, and execute all 
their sentences concerning heresy." Year 1569. "Confirma- 
tion of the society of those signed with the cross." Year 1570. 

It is indispensable to remember, that from the period of 
the Pontificate of Pope Leo X. all the Popes above enumerated 
reigned subsequent to the Reformation. The last five of those 
Pontiffs held the antichristian sword and sceptre during the 
sessions of the Council of Trent, consequently their decisions 
precisely express the judgment of that last pretended represent- 
ative body of Papal Infallibles. Hence we can accurately de- 
duce the exact opinions and spirit of the present Romanists ; all 
of whom swear that they are governed in every point of faith, 
ceremonial, and practice, by th^ supposed unerring decisions of 
that Council. 

*" The most imposing attribute of the Papal Hierarchy in every 
age, since " the Dragon gave the Beast his power, and his seat, 
and great authority, and all the world wondered after the Beast," 
has been the resolute determination of all orders among them to 
extirpate every heretic, or those persons who refuse to submit to 
their intolerable despotism. To accomplish that object, the de- 
cretals and the extravagants were issued as circumstances de- 
manded, or as the power to oppress which they involved could 
with impunity most successfully be exercised. 

The Pontifical Extravagants, and every law which have been 
made by the civil authorities, in conformity with them, against 
heretics, are directed by the court of Rome inviolably to be ob- 
served. All of them have regularly been ratified. Those decre- 
tals are not abrogated. Neither disuse, through want of power 
to administer them; nor time, however long the duration of the 
interval since they were everywhere enforced, has in the least 



1^ ** THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

paralyzed their claim to supreme, universal, and deathless juris- 
diction. The usurped power of the Romish Prelates and Inqui- 
sitors to imprison, torture, confiscate, condemn^ and burn Protes- 
tants, is only suspended in its operation. 

The assertion of right is not abandoned ; and the exercise of 
the sway is not abolished. Papal statutes* respecting the Inqui- 
sition must be valid as long as the pontificate endures. The en- 
actments of the Council of Trent will have the authority of Po- 
pish law, until the overthrow of Babylon the Great. All Ro- 
man Prelates and Priests in Protestant countries are authorized 
ever to adopt the appointed regulations and customs of the Inqui- 
sition ; both in the shameless methods of the Confessional, and in 
the more excruciating terrors of the Masshouse dungeons. The 
preceding decretals, rescripts, rules, and canons, as transcribed 
from the Directory for the Inquisition, and the bulls of more 
than twenty Popes during a period of nearly four hundred years, 
are the common law of the Papacy upon this subject ; the full 
obligations of which, according to their casuistry and decisions, 
are universal and permanent. 

The volume entitled " Directorium Inquisitorium," with the 
•• LitersB Apostolicae diversorum summorum Pontificum,'' is 
closed with a disquisition by Pegna, *' Auditor of causes at 
Rome;" the officer on whose judgment depends the whole code 
of Papal morality and government. That discussion was writ- 
ten for Pope Gregory XIII. and the eight Cardinal Inquisi- 
tors ; expressly to demonstrate that the extravagants and Papal 
bulls, which have already been cited, are of " the greatest utility, 
and importance, and authority, respecting the duties of the In- 
quisitors of heretical pravity." In that corroborative document, 
the ensuing propositions are announced as infallible truths. 

" 1. The Roman Pontiffs ever have exercised the greatest care 
in extirpating heretics. — 3. All the Extravagants published 
against heretics are in force without change or end. — 4. The 
Roman Pontiffs can command that the secular laws against here- 
tics shall be observed. — 5. Justinian coerced the execution of the 
laws against heretics. — 6. The laws against heretics are not 



397 

abolished through disuse, or lapse of time. — 14. The Extrava- 
gants against heretics are general laws, which always endure ; 
and must universally be obeyed. — 15. The preceding Extra va- 
gants against heretics are promulged by the commands of the 
Cardinal Inquisitors, dated at Rome ; Calend. Octob. Anno 
1584." 

That the above canons and rules for the extirpation of heresy 
or Protestantism are in full authority, and that the enforcement of 
them is only delayed to "a m.ore convenient season," is self-evd- 
dent ; when we advert to the " profession of faith, of Pope Pius 
IV." W'hich every Roman Priest ratifies by his oath ; and which 
is the solemnly announced creed of every Papist. In that docu- 
ment are the following articles. "I acknowledge the Roman 
Church for the mother and mistress of all churches: and I 
promise true obedience to the Bishop of Rome, successor to 
Peter, Prince of the Apostles and Vicar of Jesus Christ. I most 
steadfastly admit and embrace apostolical and ecclesiastical tradi- 
tions, and all other observances and constitutions of the same 
church. — I also admit the holy scripture according to that sense, 
which our holy mother the church has held, and does hold, to 
W'hich it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of 
the scriptures ; neither will I ever take and interpret them other- 
wise than according to the unanimous consent of the fathers. — 
I likewise undoubtedly receive and profess all things delivered, 
defined, and declared by the canons and general Councils, and 
particularly by the Council of Trent: and I condemn, reject, 
and anathematize all things contrary thereto, and all heresies 
which the church has condemned, rejected, and anathematized. — 
I do freely profesf?, and sincerely hold this faith, without which 
no one can be saved." 

Thus it is explicitly declared, that the belief of all the decre- 
tals, canons, extra vagants, and bulls of the successive Roman 
Pontiffs and Popish Councils in every age during the last 1200 
years, is essential to salvation ; for the Council of Trent re- 
enacted the entire mass as infallibly true, and unchangeable in 
authority. Notwithstanding that " Profession of Faith" is taugkt 
34 



398 ** THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

to every convert ; yet we are deceitfully told by the Jesuit Priests, 
that the doctrines of Popery respecting "heretical pravity" are 
altered; although in "the Grounds of the Catholic doctrine,'^ a 
work published in all parts of the kingdoms of antichrist, we are 
assured that the above " profession of faith" is required, and re- 
peated, " because the Doctrine of the Council of Trent is in 
opposition to the doctrines of Luther and Calvin ; and therefore, 
assent is particularly declared to the decrees of that Councjyi, as 
being levelled against those heresies which have been most pre- 
valent in the two last ages." This last declaration will appear 
most certain ; after we shall briefly have explored some of the 
Jesuit practical exhibitions of those characteristic papal mandates. 
The preceding extracts from the pontifical authorities develop 
the nature of those principles which have been most powerfully 
and generally operative throughout the widely extended domains 
of the Popedom. All the acts of the Papal hierarchy have 
been both a practical comment and a melancholy demonstration 
that the court of Rome is immutable in its treacherous malignity, 
and in the ruthless curse which they inflict upon their priest- 
ridden vassals. Want of power and of influence often has 
constrained the Dominicans and Jesuits to be silent and inactive; 
or expediency and self-interest may have induced them to conceal 
their turpitude and bloodthirstiness, but the dispositions and the 
will are inseparable from Popery and cannot be eradicated. 
This fact will appear irrefragable, if we subjoin to the prior dog- 
mas some concise historical illustrations. To enlarge upon the 
general topics would be irrelevant ; as it would be only to reca- 
pitulate the martyrologies of Christians. It is sufficient to men- 
tion the almost incessant storm of persecution which raged 
during a long period, the duration of which cannot be exactly 
ascertained, for " the great red Dragon, and the scarlet coloured 
Beast" deeply impressed the marks of their compound, *' leop- 
ard — bear — lion" fangs, upon all those "who kept the com- 
mandments of God, and who had the testimony of Jesus," in 
Britain, France, Bohemia, Netherlands, Poland, Piedmont ; and 
indeed in every country and recess of the ten kingdoms which 



I 



WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS." 399 

emphatically constitute that mystical empire, Babylon the 
Great. 

Per$t6%dions. — Humanity stands aghast when it contemplates 
the direful events which the Papal historians and annalists so exult- 
ingly narrate of the ineffable miseries which have desolated the 
nations_of Europe, in consequence of pontifical persecuting des- 
potism and croisading fanaticism and bigotry. Since the year 
666,^ Avhen " the two witnesses clothed in sackcloth" began to 
prophesy, and the ecclesiastical tyrant of Rome first unfolded 
the fearful power which he had usurped, a more terrific, unre- 
lenting, and destructive slaughter of the human family was sys- 
tematically executed, than the world had ever before realized ; 
and attended with atrocities incomparably more heinous and un- 
natural than those which, in any age previously, had tormented 
mankind. What nation which at that period was accessible to 
the Papal emissaries can be designated, that was not made the 
arena of the most frightful oppression, anguish, and carnage? 
Where can you travel about Europe, and not find the deathless 
proofs of the sanguinary spirit and merciless exhibition of Po- 
pery? Cities, towns, villages, and other spots consecrated by 
the Christian's prayers and tears, and hallowed by the martyr's 
blood, continuously bring before your eyes, the prophetic vision. 
Revelation 17; "The woman sitting upon the scarlet coloured 
beast, full of names of blasphemy ; drunken with the blood of 
the Saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus ;" delight- 
ed with the work of death which she had enjoined, and exulting 
in the racks, and daggers, and poison, and fires which that 
** Mystery" had invented and coerced into ceaseless and univer- 
sal application? Greater numbers of mankind have been mur- 
dered by the Papal hierarchy, on the account of the Christian 
religion, than have untimely perished from any other cause ; for 
the renowned ten Pagan persecutions assuredly did not shed one 
hundredth part of the human blood, nor comprise one thousandth 
part of those agonies and crimes, which were the effect ofl those 
persecutions that the Popish Moloch contrived and accom- 
plished. 



400 " THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

Since that apocalyptic period, the year which includes '* the 
number of the Beast, six hundred threescore and six :" imper- 
fect as are the records, the most profound historians have esti- 
mated that the number of Christians, who have been either 
directly or indirectly immolated to the barbarous and insatiable 
bloodthirsty voracity of the Roman Pontiffs, and the adherents 
of their inordinate tyranny, amounts to more than 50,000,000 of 
the human family, or nearly forty-five thousand annually, 
throughout that long protracted duration. Even since the Ref- 
ormation in the sixteenth century, from the year 1540 to 1570, 
only thirty years, it is proved by national authentic testimony, 
that nearly one million of Protestants were publicly put to death 
in various countries in Europe, besides all those who were pri- 
vately destroyed, and of whom no human record exists. Verge- 
rius, an infuriated Popish historian, testifies with expressions of 
great satisfaction, that during the Pontificate of Pope Paul IV. 
who issued the famous Bull, entitled, " Damnation of Elizabeth 
of England ;''^ and who was seated in the pontifical throne but 
four years, "the Inquisition alone, by tortures, starvation, or the 
fire, murdered more than 150,000 Protestants." If any circum- 
stance is necessary to maintain, in all its vital energy, the insu- 
perable repugnance to Romanism, it is the odious facts; that not 
one of all the preceding abhorrent decretals and injunctions has 
been abrogated — and that Pope Gregory XVI. in his encyclical 
letter of 1832, has virtually afRrmed the whole of the pontifical 
canons, bulls, and decretals, to be infallible, unchangeable, and 
permanent in their odious claims and jurisdiction. 

Wars. — Probably at the tribunal where Christian morals and 
philanthropy preside and arbitrate, to no charge is the system 
of Popery more exposed, and to no condemnation more equitably 
doomed, than that of having been the chief cause and the pri- 
mary instigator of all .those pestiferous wars which, during the 
last thousand years, have filled the European kingdoms and their 
dependencies with confusion, famine, slaughter, and all diversifi- 
ed wickedness. This attribute of the Rom.an court has been ex- 
emplified in a series of acts, the record of which is too lament- 



401 

ably true to be disputed. " Kingdom was excited against king- 
dom. Princes were forced to oppress and ruin their most valu- 
able subjects. The people were stimulated to unjust rebellion 
against their rulers. Fathers destroyed their children ; and the 
maddened ambitious youth killed their parents." All these and 
their consociated crimes were perpetrated, that the designs of the 
Roman Pontiff might be consummated. 

The destruction of Mohammedans and the extermination of 
the Heathen Idolaters were announced to be less meritorious, 
than attacks upon the heretics : for the extirpation of Protestants, 
according to Romish casuistry, is a work peculiarly laudable and 
replete with sanctity. Molanus, Castro, Bonacina, Diana, and 
many other Papal authors of the greatest renown, afHrm as in- 
fallible ; " that whenever heretics cannot otherwise be extirpated, 
they must be destroyed by war, if they are not too strong and 
numerous to vanquish the Papal assailants." To this general 
principle must also be imputed all the multiplied European mod- 
ern collisions, since the first attempt of the Emperor Charles 
V. speedily after the Reformation in Germany, upon the Pro- 
testants of Saxony, until the existing civil war in Spain ; and 
which diabolical principle, as " the spirit of prophecy which is 
the testimony of Jesus" declares, will be the prolific source of all 
the future collisions among the nations of Europe, until " the 
Beast and the False Prophet" shall be captured by "the Word 
of God ;" and they shall be *' cast alive into the lake of fire 
burning with brimstone." Cardinal Allen, in his " Admonition 
to Nobles and People," Page 41 ; thus announces the doctrine 
of the Roman conclave — ** It is clear, that what people or per- 
sons soever be declared to be opposite to God's church ;" as he 
wickedly perverts the phrase to designate the Pontifical Hierar- 
' chy ; " with what obligation soever either of kindred, friendship, 
loyalty, or subjection, I be bound unto them ; I may or rather 
must take up arms against them, and then must we take them 
for heretics, when our lawful Popes adjudge them so to be: 
and which, saith Cardinal Pole, is war more holy than that 
against the Turks." 
34* 



402 •* THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

To those who assumed that *' mark of the Beast," the badg-e 
of the cross, and who engaged to extirpate the heretics, the Ro- 
man Pontiffs and Papal Councils and Synods always promised 
*' plenary indulgences," universal dispensations, full pardon of 
all sins past, present, and to come, and " the golden crown of 
Paradise." In proof of this statement, Basnage and Moreri, in 
their histories, century 13, amply detail the means by which 
**the inhabitants of the earth, who had been made drunk with 
the wine of fornication," with which the " Mother of Harlots and 
abominations of the earth" had made them intoxicated, were ex- 
cited to those ecclesiastical wars that were denominated croisades. 
The " Pseaching Friars" were dispersed throughout all the ten 
kingdoms of the Papal empire to resomid the trump of alarm, 
and to reiterate the demand for vengeance upon the enemies of 
their great goddess "the Church." The Pontifical bulls have 
been previously quoted, in which Paradise w^as offered for actual 
service during twenty or forty days in killing heretics. Sismondi 
in his history of the croisades against the Albigenses evinces ; 
besides the countless multitudes of innocent Christians who per- 
ished under the name of Albigenses, by the barbarity of the 
legions of ferocious Papists, who assembled under the command 
of Simon Montfort, and Lewis VIII. and Lew^is IX., kings of 
France, that the croisaders themselves were almost equal suffer- 
ers. Bertrand, the Papal Legate, wrote a letter to Pope Hono- 
rius, desiring to be recalled from the croisade against the prim- 
itive witnesses and contenders for the faith. In that authentic 
document, he stated, that within fifteen years, 300,000 of those 
crossed soldiers had become \actims to their own fanatical and 
blind fury. Their unrelenting and insatiable thirst for Christian 
and human blood spared none within the reach of their impetu- 
ous* despotism and unrestricted usurpations. On the river Ga- 
ronne, a conflict occurred between the croisaders, w^ith their ec- 
clesiastical leaders, the Prelates of Thoulouse and Comminges ; 
who solemnly promised to all their vassals the full pardon of sin, 
and the possession of heaven immediately, if they were slain in 
the battle. The Spanish monarch and his confederates acknow- 



403 

ledi^ed that they must have lost 400,000 men, in that tremendous 
conflict, and immediately after it — but the Papists boasted, that 
including the women and children, they had massacred more 
than two millions of the human family, in that solitary croisade 
against the southwest part of France. "^ 

Clark, in his Martyrology, when describing the extraordinary 
scenes of prior periods, narrates ; that during the early period of 
the Reformation in England, and prior to the exaltation of Cran- 
mer and Cromwell to power; during the reign of Henry VIII. 
pardons to the utmost extent of the Papal limits w^ere promised 
to all persons " who provided a fagot or a twig to burn a here- 
ticJ^ In the reign of Henry VIII. a man named Peck was 
condemned to be burnt for his anti-popish attachments. The 
dreadful scene was commanded to be enacted at Ipswich. A 
Popish " Doctor of Divinity," named Reading, stood near the 
place of the Martyr's flight to Paradise, and publicly announced 
— " To as many as shall cast a stick to the burning of this here' 
tic, T/i?/ Lord Bishop of Norwich grants forty days of pardon.'''' 
In consequence of which, Baron Curson, John Audley a knight, 
and other ofrandees, rose from their seats, w^alked to the neio-h- 
bouring wood, cut down branches of trees, and threw them into 
the fire. All the silly multitude followed their nefarious ex- 
ample. 

Usher, and other authors assure us, that prior to the massacre 
in Ireland, in 1641, the Roman Priests were assiduous in per- 
suading the people, not to spare one man, woman, or child, of the 
Protestants ; assuring them that " it icovld do them much good 
to wash their hands in the hearths blood of the heretics.'''' The 
common ignorant people were taught by their Jesuit Priests, thiit 
''the Protestants are worse than dogs; for they are deinls ; and 
therefore the killing of them is a meritorious act, and a rare 
preservative against the pains of purgatory ; for^ said those im- 
pious Priests, the bodies of those who fall in the holy cause shall 
not be cold, before their souls shall ascend up into heaven.^^ 
During that carnage, many of those who had tortured and but- 
chered the Protestants, both women, girls, and men, with an un 



404 " THE AVOMAN DRUNKEN 

natural brutality indescribable, thus boasted, upon the Romish 
Priest's promise — '*If we shall die immediately, we shall go 
straight to heaven." To prove that Romanism is identical, and 
that all sterling improvement of the people of any country is im- 
practicable to be effected as long as Popery sways ; it is proper 
to remember, that the principles and actions of the Papists in Ire- 
land at this day are exactly the same as the above fearful descrip- 
tion of the melancholy scenes and the causes of them, which ex- 
isted two hundred years ago, and which produced the simulta- 
neous butchery of 200,000 Protestants, " the voice of whose blood 
still cries from the ground," and manifestly remains unexpiated, 
because the same principles predominate ; and also remains un- 
pardoned, because that unhappy island is the theatre in which 
ignorance, plunder, licentiousness, and murder, the four grand 
constitutents of Popery, exemplify all their ungodly qualities 
and mischievous results. 

The Roman Pontiffs not only advised, but commanded and 
adjured the potentates of Europe, *' by the salvation and wounds 
of Christ," to commence and prolong the croisades, and threat- 
ened those powers with excommunication and interdicts, if they 
did not comply with the pontifical mandate. That was the style 
of the bull that was issued by Pope Martin V. against the Hus- 
sites in 1420, which was the cause of that long protracted strife 
and storm which poured desolation and death upon Bohemia ; 
and which was so successfully resisted by the Taborites. Even 
JEnes-S Sylvius, who was afterwards Pope, in his condemnation 
of the injustice and iniquity of those oppressors who had been 
instigated to their ravages by that Papal bull, declared in his 
ivorks still extant, that future ages would not believe that such 
an atrociously wicked manifesto could emanate from the court of 
Rome, 

During the ages when the supremacy of the Pope was the 
corner-stone of the whole European social and international edi- 
fice, the most efficient mode to pacify the offended ecclesiastics, 
and to ratify peace and friendship with Rome, was prompt and 
unreserved obedience to these Papal mandates, which enforced 



405 

the extirpation of heretics. Two remarkable proofs of this po- 
sition are recorded at different periods, and with an interval be- 
tween them of more than four hundred and fifty years ; thereby 
demonstrating- that the Papacy is immutable. The Emperor 
Frederick II., about the year 1225, refused to obey the Pontifical 
commands ; and for his resistance to the Papal authority, his con- 
tinued insubordination, and finally, by his opposing the court of 
Rome with military force ; Pope Gregory IX, in the year 1228, 
excommunicated that monarch, denouncing him as " a mon- 
ster more infamous and wicked than Judas and Nero." That 
anathema was repeated in the year 1238; but finally, a pacifi- 
cation was completed between the haughty triple-crowned despot, 
and the emperor, who was worn out with unceasing trials, alarms, 
and fears of open abandonment, and private treachery, and secret 
assassination. Frederick finally agreed to pay to the Pope 
for his absolution 120,000 ounces of gold, and to confirm the 
peace by his most ferocious laws, and an exterminating cru- 
sade against the Albigenses who had taken refuge in Germany, 
by flying from persecution in the south of France. Those im- 
perial edicts denounced the Albigenses and all other rebels against 
the Roman ecclesiastical supremacy as incorrigible enemies of 
mankind. " They were branded \vith perpetual ignominy, and 
declared to be outlau^s of the world. Their property w^as subject to 
confiscation. They were condemned to be burnt. Their heirs were 
disfranchised, and deprived of all claims to patrimonial and every 
other i-vheritance. Those who recanted were doomed to perpetual 
imprisonment in th^dungeons of the Inquisition. All who ex- 
tended mercy to those Christians w^ere liable to the same punish- 
ment ; and to render the malignant hatred of the infuriated bigots 
incurable, it was enjoined that all the houses in w^iich the Albi- 
genses had resided, or into which they had even entered, should 
be razed, and that no building should again be erected upon the 
infamous spot." That was the manner in which the Popish 
idol was glutted, and with those hecatombs of human sacrifices 
alone as a peace-offering, could the "scarlet-coloured drunken 
Harlot" af Rome be appeased. 



406 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

Those circumstances in the history of the Emperor Frederick 
occurred about three hundred years prior to the Reformation, 
during which period his death-dealing edicts were the governing 
laws of the German empire. One hundred and seventy years 
after Luther and Zuingle had resounded the blasts of the evangeli- 
cal trump, and commenced their assaults upon the spiritual Jeri- 
cho, a similar tragedy was enacted. Lewis XIV. king of France, 
and the successive Popes, had long been at variance ; and the 
court of Rome had frequently menaced that dreadful tyrant and 
persecutor with an interdict for his kingdom, and the sentence of 
excommunication and dethronement for himself. But through 
the malign artifices of his Judas-like Jesuit confessor, and his pa- 
ramour, the king's favourite concubine, he was induced to annul 
the edict of Nantz, and to commence that series of atrocious per- 
secutions which almost eradicated even the memorial of the 
Christian religion from France. Then Pope Innocent XL for- 
gave that despot all his former rebellious offences, and approved 
and eulogized all his barbarous acts and exterminating measures ; 
which inflicted upon that kingdom crimes, miseries, and penury, 
from which, after the lapse of one hundred and fifty years, and 
a revolutionizing internal commotion of half a century's dura- 
tion, it has scarcely perceptibly recovered. The following extract 
from that Pontiff's letter, congratulating the king of France for 
his revocation of the edict of Nantz, graphically develops the 
spirit and delights of Popery. 

*' Innocent XL to Lewis XIV." That Man of Sin impiously 
calls the ruthless persecutor, "Our dearest Son in Christ." He 
thus celebrates the proceedings of the furious monarch, and most 
hypocritically greets him with his pretended apostolical bene- 
diction. *' We thought it incumbent unon us," said the Pope, 
" most largely to commend that excellent piety of yours — ^that 
you have wholly abrogated all those constitutions that were fa- 
vourable to the heretics of your kingdom, and by most wise de- 
crees set forth, have excellently provided for the propagation of 
the orthodox belief ' — which decrees were like that roll of a book 
that was spread before the Prophet, Ezekiel 2: 9, 10; which 



407 

was ** written within and without ; and there was written therein 
lamentations, and mourning, and wo" — "by the lasting testimony 
of these our letters ; and to congratulate your Majesty on that ac- 
cession of immortal commendation which you have added to 
your other exploits by this illustrious act. The Roman church 
shall most assuredly record in her annals a work of such devo- 
tion, and celebrate your name with never-dying praises. Above 
all, you may most deservedly promise to yourself ample retribu- 
tion from the divine goodness for this most excellent underta- 
king." — That was the Pope's character of the most diabolical 
measure of national perfidy and suicide, and of almost unpar- 
alleled anguish and wickedness which ever was perpetrated ; 
for until the French Revolution, one hundred years after, the 
light of the Gospel in France was totally imperceptible ; and 
the comparatively few descendants of the Huguenots were dead 
in every civic relation, and exactly assimilated to the dry bones 
in the valley, which Ezekiel in the spirit saw and addressed. — 
Quick's Synodicon in Gallia Reformata, Vol. 1, Page 156. 

This demonstration of the changeless temper of theRoman court 
is confirmed by another fact which is analogous. The highest 
honours, the most fulsome panegyrics, the richest benedictions, 
and the most valuable rewards, have invariably been bestowed 
by the Popes upon those persecutors, who have evinced an utter 
destitution of remorse, or rather an increased degree of triumph 
proportioned to the number of Christians whom they butchered, 
and to the stream of human blood which they caused to flow. 

The authors already cited, Basnage, and Moreri, and Clark, 
narrate ; that Earl Simon commanded one of the Albigensian 
crusades at the commencement of the thirteenth century. He 
boasted that he had razed many cities, and killed all their inhab- 
itants, men, women, ftnd children, without a single exception: 
and that he had buried alive in pits, and burnt in large fires at 
the same time, several hundreds of Christians together. For his 
almost unexampled atrocities, he was rewarded by the Papal 
legate in a council held at Montpelier, in 1214, with the dona- 
tion of all the dominions which he could conquer ; and the then 



408 *' THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

reigning Pope Innocent III. conferred upon him this title — 
•* Tke active and dexterous soldier of Jesus Christ, and the in- 
vincible defender of the faith." In the following year, those 
titles and donations were confirraed by that Council of Lateran, 
' which decreed the dogma of Trans ubstantiation. Simon imme- 
diately after visited the French monarch, according to the feudal 
custom, to receive baronial investiture. As he passed through 
the various towns, the Popish Priests and Friars, with the at- 
tending multitudes, met him in procession, and escorted him from 
one place to another, blasphemously shouting as they walked — 
"Blessed is he that cometh to us in the name of the Lord" — and 
every person crowded around him to touch the hem of his gar- 
ment, for the cure of diseases, and the seal of salvation. 

Henry VIII. of England was honoured with the title of " De- 
fender of the Faith" from the Pope; and however practically 
absurd, his successors have continued the same appellative, 
although they have almost constantly been opposed to the Romish 
dogmas. — Leti, in his Vita di Sisto v. Vol. 2, records, that Sixtus 
V. sent a consecrated sword to the Duke of Guise, which was pre 
sented to him at Paris with the most pompous ceremony. The 
king, Henry III. who was alarmed at the rebellious proceedings of 
the Guises, remonstrated with the Pope against that approbation 
of his daring enemy ; but the Pope replied, that he must suppress 
his H^uguenot subjects, whom he represented as a canker in the 
state, which can only be cured by fire ani sword. *' It is neces 
sary," said that Pontiff, "to give vent to 'some of that blood 
which too much abounds in the veins of your subjects " — The 
Duke of Parma received a similar sword from the Pope, and 
for his tremendous ravages among the Protestants of the Nether- 
lands, statues were erected to his honour ! 

For the revocation of the edict of Nantjf, Lewis XIV. received 
the most extravagant eulogy which language can express. The 
Prelate of Valence addressed him in 1684, in the name of a 
grand Popish ecclesiastical convention : and applied to him the 
titles — " Great restorer of the faith, and Extirpator of heresy}^ 
** In vain," said that Roman parasite, " should I call to my as- 



409 

sistance all the panegyrics of the emperors." Medals, statues, 
and triumphal arches were invented, all of which exhibited Lewis 
crushing with his feet the Huguenots in the form of a Hydra. 
Courtiers, academicians, orators, and poets, united to resound the 
praise and embalm with ecclesiastical immortality the name of 
that modern Domitian ! 

As the revocation of the edict of Nantz is comparatively a re- 
cent persecution, it is desirable to preserve a memorial of Popery 
in France, at precisely the same period when the English nation, 
by the Revolution of 1688, banished James H. and his conso- 
ciated Jesuit traitors from the throne of Britain. Among the 
existing highly applauded memorials of that period is a sapphic 
ode by ^ladame Deshouliers, entitled, " La destruction de I'here- 
sie;" in which that poetess states, that Lew^is XIV. by the extir- 
pation of the Huguenots, had executed a superhuman w^ork ; and 
that the Papists of France complained of his modesty, which 
would not permit his subjects " abatir des temples et a t' adorer,'* 
to build temples to his honour, and worship him. — Poesies de M. 
Deshoulieres. Tom. Pag. 83. — Answer to King Jam.es' Decla- 
ration, 1689, Pag. 8, 9. 

It must also be recorded, that the Roman Pontiffs did not only 
command and incite national collisions, and especially those in 
which the interests of the Papal hierarchy were inseparably ce- 
mented : but they also collected the munitions of war, embodied 
militia, appropriated treasures, granted taxes and tithes, and de- 
spatched their own troops ; to which the various ecclesiastical 
orders contributed all their aid, not only by bestowing their sub- 
sidies, but also by assuming the dress and armour, and person- 
ally engaging in the combats. The bigoted Papist Maimbourg 
in his History of Lutheranism declares, that to aid the Emperor 
Charles V. in 1546, to extirpate the Protestants in Germany, 
the. Pope contracted to maintain for six months an army of croi- 
saders of 12,000 footmen and 500 cavalry; for which expense 
that Emperor was authorized to seize one half of all the priestly 
revenues of the Spanish kingdom, and to levy 500,000 crowns 
from the monasteries. Thereby, says Maimbourg, *' the Pop« 
35 



410 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

evidently declared, that it was a war of religion." Sixtus V., as"^ 
recorded by Leti, in his life of that Pope, was the grand instiga-^ . 
tor of that ferocious ambition which induced Philip II. to attempt 
the ruin of Britain by the Spanish armada. Sleidan in his 
Commentaries narrates, that Pope Pius V. adopted the same 
measures with Charles IX. of France ; and the Parisian Mas- 
sacre was the result of the pontifical machinations. 

During the league of the sixteenth century in France, a legate 
was sent from Rome, with a crowd of Italian prelates and monks 
to rouse the furious zeal of the Papist leaguers. In combination 
with the French ecclesiastics, they marched through the streets 
of Paris in martial array, carrying a cross in one hand and a 
spear in the other, with a helmet on their heads, and a shield on 
their backs ; and to disclose their spirit, and design, and resolu- 
tion, they styled themselves, " Valiant MaccaheesV The Capu- 
chin, Augustin, Franciscan, Dominican, and Carmelite Friars 
thus continually roamed about, with a monk named Bernard as 
their chief orator, proclaiming pardons and paradise for all who 
joined the league ; and denouncing the Papal anathema and 
everlasting damnation against all who refused to unite in the 
croisade against the Huguenots. — Thou Hist. Book 98. Me- 
moires de Nevers. Tom. 2, Page 72. 

Not longer ago than the year 1745, a number of the most 
cruel edicts of Lewis XIV. were revived and executed against 
the few surviving and wretched Huguenots in France; for 
-which act of the government, the Roman Priests on that occasion, 
presented the odiously profligate court of Lewis XY. two mil-, 
lions and four hundred thousand livres ; which sum was repaid in 
the unrestricted indulgence given to the vilest sensuality, and the 
amount was soon regained by confiscations. — History of the reign 
of Lewis XV. Year 1745. 

Treason. — The following paragraph from the •' Review of the 
principles and history of Popery" contains an accurate summary 
of Romanism, as it involves the interest and safety of Protestant 
governments and nations. *' Refractory princes who have not been 
disposed to glut Rome's insatiable thirst with enough of Chris- 



WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS." 411 

tian blood, or who have not assented to all the Papistical usur* 
pations and arrogant claims, have experienced no mercy. The 
rio-ht of succession has been denied and subverted, for the small- 
est personal taint of Anti -Romanism, or for the toleration of it in 
others; and indescribable difficulties always were interposed 
against the rebellious ruler's restoration to power, even after he 
had made every possible renunciation, and degraded himself to 
the most humiliating penances, and received the amplest pontifi- 
cal absolutions. For suspected and actual heresy, sentence of 
excommunication and deposition was fulminated against gov- 
ernors, more than for any other causes. Treasonable plots, con- 
spiracies, insurrections, and rebellions, were formed, promoted, 
executed, and by pretended pleas ,of religion were justified, de- 
lighted in, and eulogized. Those infernal proceedings were 
blasphemously ascribed to the inspiration of God, and when any 
success attended the scheme, it was imputed to the divine appro- 
val, and unquestionable miraculous interposition. To execute 
those traitorous machinations, or to die in the attempt, was pro- 
nounced to be infallible proof of the most exalted piety, and the 
certain path to eternal felicity ; entitling the actor to the honour 
of saintship, and the * glorious crown of martyrdom. On the 
contrary, obedience and loyalty on the part of Papists to Pro- 
testant governments, are declared damnable sins, for which there 
is no pardon either in this world, or in eternity. To convince 
the bigoted adherents of the Papacy, that all such treasons are 
works of pre-eminent piety ; pretended prayers, discourses, sacra- 
ments, ecclesiastical censures, absolutions, oaths, and covenants, 
with all that is apparently sacred and imposing in religion, have 
been prostituted ; and all that is exciting and fascinating in super- 
stition has been effectually employed among the votaries of the 
Romish Priesthood, who are divested of every sentiment of reli« 
gion, virtue, or humanity. The absolute duty of assassinating 
Protestant rulers, especially after sentence has been pronounced 
against them by the Pope, is constantly taught and vehemently 
proclaimed ; with the most deliberate resolution, and after the 
most solemn preparations, that nefarious criminality has fre- 



412 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

quently been perpetrated : although it has more often been un- 
successfully attempted: but in all cases the remorseless murder- 
ers have been exalted in Popish estimation to the very highest 
honours : and some of them were worshipped with the samo 
adoration which is performed to the Romish canonized saints." 

Notwithstanding all the prevalent incredulity respecting the 
attributes and practices of modern Romanism; it seems to be 
universally admitted, that no human conceptions can fully em- 
body the awful realities of that period, when the Italian Pontiffs 
were the actual living exemplars of the blasphemy which was 
uttered by Ravaillac — " The Pope is GodJ^ Illustrations there- 
fore of the treasons which the Romish hierarchy command, will 
be derived exclusively from events which have occurred since 
the Reformation : and which having been executed with the im- 
plied sanction, or by the direct authority of modern Popes, in 
conformity with the decisions of the Council of Trent, demon- 
strate; that of the Pontifical antichristian system, its devotees may 
truly repeat their chant — "As it was in the beginning, is now, 
and ever shall be !" 

1. Henri/ VIII. of England. — After that monarch had pub- 
licly renounced all allegiance to the Roman Pontiff^ and had 
shown his profound contempt for the popish impostures, by 
directing that the pretended bones and relics of that Romish 
Saint, the traitor Thomas Becket, should be burnt, accompanied 
by a number of ignominious ceremonies. Pope Paul III. issued 
his famous bull of excommunication. Having asserted his hea-^ 
ven appointed authority over all earthly potentates, to pluck up 
and destroy, and other similar scriptures which are always em- 
ployed in pontifical canting, the haughty ecclesiastical despot 
summoned Henry VIII. " to appear within ninety days at Rome, 
and his feudal accomplices within sixty days;" and upon his re- 
fusal he was declared to have fallen from his crown, and his sub- 
ordinate officers from their estates. He put the whole kingdom 
under an interdict, and required all the Roman Priests of every 
grade to leave the kingdom of England within five days of a 
specified time, except a few who were permitted to remain to 



413 

"christen children, and to administer the Extreme Unction to 
those who died in penitence." He pronounced Henry VHI. and 
all his accomplices infamous, and placed their children under all 
the incapacities enumerated in the bulls of his predecessors. All 
the subjects of Henry VIH. were absolved from their oaths of 
allegiance ; and were authoritatively commanded to take arms 
against him, while every person was forbidden to aid or defend 
the king under the penalty of the Papal anathema and eternal 
damnation. He absolved all princes from their treaties with 
Henry VIH. and prohibited all further intercourse with him, 
and commerce with his kingdom. He required all Papists to 
make war upon England, to plunder the goods of Englishmen 
wherever found, and to seize their persons and keep them, or sell 
them for slaves. All prelates were enjoined to publish the papal 
sentence of excommunication and interdict in every place, and 
with the usual terrific solemnities. To complete the wicked- 
ness, that Pontiff issued his mandate to the kings of France and 
Scotland, instantly to array their military force, and put his bull 
into execution." But Pope Paul HI. roared twenty-two years 
after Martin Luther had affixed his ninety-five theses against 
the portal at Wittemberg, and "all the world" no longer "'\5r0n- 
dered after the beast;" nor did the nations of Europe implicitly 
worship "the dragon who gave power unto the beast." 

2. Henry HI. of France. — That monarch was a bitter perse- 
cutor of the Protestants by wars and massacres during nearly all 
his official course. But the emergency of his affairs forced him to 
abandon the French leaguers, and unite himself, for the safety of 
his throne, with Henry of Navarre and the Huguenots. He was 
therefore denounced as an execrable tyrant, the murderer of a car- 
dinal, and a favourer of heretics; and the Pope having formally 
declared him to be accursed, he was adjudged to be lawful prey. 
About two months after the sentence of condemnation had been 
promulged at Rome against that king, Clement, a Jacobite friar 
and a priest, resolved to become the executioner for the church; 
and accordingly he assassinated that king, Henry IH. near 
Paris, ** in the midst of his guard, and at the head of his army.'' 



414 **THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

Never was a more relentless murderer than that bigoted monk- 
ish regicide. He supped and caroused the night before his crime 
with La Guele, the procurator general, to whom he had applied 
'or admission to the king upon some very important affair. He 
remained so unperturbed when replying to the questions pro- 
pounded to him, that the immediate attendants upon the king 
were entirely deceived. In the morning he was introduced into 
the monarch's chamber, to whom he approached without the 
^east symptom of emotion, presented him some letters, and while 
he was reading them, he drew out a concealed and poisoned dag- 
ger, or very large knife, and stabbed him in his belly. The 
murderer was instantly killed, and Henry HI. died within a 
very short period. But an equally instructive fact connected 
with that Jesuit regicide, appears in the retributive justice which 
a mysterious Providence permitted then to be developed. Henry 
had contrived and authorized many similar atrocities against the 
Huguenots, had been a principal actor in the Parisian slaughter, 
and was assassinated in the same place, in the identical apart- 
ment, and at the precise hour of the day, when he and his fel- 
low conspirators had determined and arranged the sanguinary 
destruction called the massacre of Bartholomew. — Sleidan. — 
Mezeray. 

The Romish Priests were the great agents in inciting the 
French Papists to exterminate the Huguenots. After Henry 
in. deserted the league, they incessantly resounded the cry of 
war, and blood, and death. In one year only, it is stated, that 
100,000 families were ruined, and during the contest 500,000 
Papists were murdered. The Croisaders of the league were so 
infuriated and bewitched, that when they could plunder, or even 
carry away the head of their father, brother, relative, or neigh- 
bour, if he did not belong to the league, it was considered the 
most acceptable work of God; and the Romish Priests taught 
the blinded people that the more robberies they perpetrated, the 
more rapes they committed, and the more murders they exe- 
cuted, the greater would be their reward in heaven. — Satyr© 
Meoippe. Vol. 2, Page 444 ; and Vol. 3, Page 274, 275. 



415 

In the Memoires de la Ligue, Tom. 3. Page 399; are de- 
tailed those facts in reference to the irreligion and profligacy of 
the Roman Priests and their minions, who formed the confede- 
racy called the Leaguers. Where was ever more sacrilege, 
more rapes, and blasphemies than among the troops of the league. 
They even obliged the Priebts to enact their superstitious mum- 
mery, and christen calves, sheep, chickens, and give them th^ 
names of different fish, that they might eat them in Lent. They 
violated women and girls of every age and condition ; robbed 
the masshouse altars, and murdered their own parents and rela- 
tives, as their ordinary employment. . ** The mass and religion 
were in their mouths, but atheism in their hearts and actions " 
*' To violate all laics divine and human is the infallible mark 
and true character of a Papist zealot.''^ — D'Aubigne Hist 
Univers. Tom. 1 ; Lib. 2; Chap. 26. — Journal de Henri HI 
Page 121.— Satyre Menippe, Vol. 3: Page 335. 

Clement, who killed Henry HI. was induced by those who 
led him into his crime to believe that he had seen a vision in 
which he was ordered to kill the king. Having consulted 
Bourgoin, the superior of the Jacobin monks, by whom he was 
assured not only of the lawfulness, but of the peculiar meritori- 
ousness of his undertaking, he proceeded *' to cleanse and purge 
his soulj^ as his brother Priest expressed it, by fastings, absti- 
nence, and confession, and finally received the viaticum, as one 
who was about immediately to render his soul to God. — Emilliane 
Hist. Monast. Page 206. — Owen's Jacobin Principles Examin- 
ed, Page 49. 

3. Henry IV. of France. — The history of Henry IV. is so 
conjoined with that of his predecessor, that the same causes, 
which impelled the murder of one, produced the assassination of 
the other. Both before and after the death of Henry HI. the 
Jesuit orators belonging to the French league constantly pro- 
claimed the lawfulness and necessity of regicide. — Lincester, a 
famous Priest, reproved one of the king's enemies for not taking 
the Mass on account of his enmity to the king. That blood- 
thirsty xuffian told his disciple; " We who daily consecrate the 



416 " THE WOMAN DRUNB;pN 

host, would make no scruple of killing him, even though he were 
at the altar holding in his hand the body of the LordP — Jour- 
nal de Henri III. Page 123. 

As soon as the death of Henry IH. was published, the coun- 
cil of the league sent an order to all the Priests to harangue 
upon the incapacity of Henry IV. for the throne, to excommu- 
nicate all his adherents, and to justify the act of Clement, in as- 
g;assinating Henry III. Aubry, a priest, persuaded a hardened 
GiTender named Barriere, that " nothing but the death of that 
rbominable heretic, Henry IV., would give security" to Popery 
i:i France. After which he was confessed, absolved, received 
the viaticum, and then attempted to execute the murder, which 
v- as _ providentially prevented. — Le Grain, Dec. de Henri le 
C ;and, Liv. 5. Page 450. 

To encourage the attempts upon the life of Henry IV. every 
m ,thod was adopted to induce the people to believe that Cle- 
m -nt, who had been immediately put to death for the assassina- 
tii a of Henry III., was a martyr ; for his name was admitted 
in G the martyrologies, and processions were made to his honour. 
Pictures, statues, and images of him, were indefinitely multi- 
plied. They were placed upon the altars in the masshouses ; 
candles were ofifered to him; and he was honoured as a canon- 
ized saint. His mother was sent for to Paris, and con.sidered as 
a beatified visitor from the heavenly world. All his relatives 
were pensioned from the public treasury ; and if his body had 
not been burnt, his remains would have been adored as the most 
precious relics. — Mezeray Histoire, Vol. iii ; page 659. 

All that wickedness, and every other transcendent crime, were 
crowned withjthe Papal benediction and eulogy. Pope Sixtus 
V. called a consistory, and in a premeditated address pronounced 
the panegyric of the murderer of Henry III. In that most ex- 
traordinary speech, that blood-thirsty Pontiff used this blas- 
phemous language. "The act of Clement — the assassination 
of Henry III. with a poisoned dagger — may be compared to 
the mystery of the assumption of the human nature by the Lord, 
and his resurrection from the dead— -and on accoiuit of the gran* 



«17 

•1 

deur and admirable quality of the deed, he extolled the mental 
energy, and fervent love of God which he displayed, as superior 
to the courage and work of Judith or Eleazar." — Du Mouhn s 
Buckler of Faith, Book 1; sect. 138: and Book 2; sect. 140. 
— Dupleix Hist, de la France, Vol. iv. Page 30. r 

Henry IV. eventually, for the sake of peace, nominally con- 
formed to Popery; but his apparent change was in vain. The 
malignity of the Jesuits was not appeased, nor his safety as- 
sured by it. Matthew, in his history of the reign of Henry 
IV. declares, that at least fifty conspiracies were formed against 
that monarch, so that his life was never safe for one moment. 
Various direct attempts to kill him were made by men and wo- 
men, in some of which he was wounded. Even his cup-bearer, 
Borbrenius, was employed by the Jesuits to poison him. At 
length, divine Providence permitted that monarch to become the 
prey of " the beast." Ravaillac, not less maddened and ferocious 
than his predecessor, assassinated Henry IV. in his coach, by 
daylight, in the public street of Paris. Exulting in his nefa- 
rious act, he did not even attempt to escape, but stood still vrith 
his bloody knife in his hand. The Jesuits had made that Pa- 
pist believe, that the king was a Huguenot in reality, and as all 
Huguenots were condemned by the Pope, and Henry was too 
favourable to the heretics, therefore it was the privilege of every 
man to murder the king, especially as he intended to make war 
v/ith the Pope — and said that infamous regicide in his defence 
before the Judges, according to the instructions which the Jes- 
uits had given him — " To make war against the Pope is to 
make war against God, seeing the Pope is God, and God is 
the Poj)eP — Moreri's History. — Jurieu's Apology for the Re- 
formation. 

4. William Nassau, Prince of Orange. — Philip II. King of 
Spain, one of the most infamous and despotic monsters who ever 
submitted to the -Papal yoke, by the sanction of the Pope issued 
a proclamation, offering " five thousand golden crowns, a patent 
of nobility, all William's estates which could be seized," and 
oiher immunities, to any person who would take away his life^ 



418 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

or deliver him up, alive or dead, into Philip's power. Event- 
ually, tne price was raised to twenty-five thousand golden crowns, 
or twenty-eigat thousand ducats, at that period an immense sum ; 
and a ferocious Spanish merchant persuaded one of his younger 
clerks, named Juanillo, to perpetrate the assassination. He was 
accordingly confessed by a Dominican Priest, absolved, and 
promised paradise. He was also assured that a spell should be 
put upon him, by which he might enter the presence of the 
prince invisibly ; and then having received the monk's benedic- 
tion, he prepared, with the title of future saintship guaranteed to 
him, to commit the atrocious crime. 

The attempt was made on the day specified, but providentially 
the design failed, although the ball of the pistol had been conse- 
crated with all the ceremonies of the mass, entered William's 
throat, broke one of his teeth, and passed out of his left cheek. 
Juanillo was killed on the spot. In his pocket was found the 
names of the priestly confessor, and others who were privy to 
the design, who were duly punished. Also, the charms which 
he was taught would preserve him from seizure and injury — 
frogs' bones, filthy rags, and other amulets, and the Jesuits' cate- 
chism, with a prayer to the angel Gabriel, imploring his inter- 
cession with the Almighty, and with the Virgin Mary, to speed 
him in the murder. To crown this nefarious transaction, and to 
prove that the priests contrived the assassination, the order after- 
wards openly recognized those criminals as martyrs " for the 
,holy Roman church!" gathered their mortal remains, and pub- 
licly exposed them in their Masshouses as relics, which were 
worshipped by the blindfolded votaries. 

Two years after, at the immediate instigation of the Jesuits 
of Dole, another rufiian was similarly prepared, and eflfectually 
executed his design. Three bullets, also consecrated for the_ex- 
press purpose, by those monkish butchers, were fired at the 
prince, which entered his left side, and passed through him, 
coming out on the right. He expired almost instantly, having 
only time to offer a short petition, that his people, and his own 
soul, might enjoy the compassionate mercy of the Lord Jesus 



419 

Christ. When the murderer was reproached as a traitor, he 
thus justified himself. *' I am no traitor ; I have done as the 
king of Spain and the Priests commanaed ;'' and then added this 
ferocious denunciation : " If I have not slain him, cursed be my 
ill fortune !" The execution of the hardened and priest-ridden as- 
sassin was a wretched compensation for the premature and sud- 
den death of one of the most dignified Christian philanthropists 
and patriots whp are found on the long catalogue of immortal- 
ized Protestants. — House of Orange. 

5. Elizabeth, Queen of England. — When Elizabeth was ele- 
vated to the English throne, the Pope Paul IV. told her ambas- 
sador, that " England was a fee of the Papacy, and that it was 
high presumption in her to assume the crown without his con- 
sent ; but if she would renounce it, and submit herself wholly to 
him, she might expect all the favour which was consistent with 
the dignity of the Roman court." A succeeding Pope, Gregory 
XIII., gave away her crown to Mary of Scotland — and during 
Elizabeth's reign nearly thirty notorious conspiracies were form- 
ed against her life ; besides the various rebellions which, had not 
a gracious Providence interposed, would have deluged the land 
with blood and desolation. Pope Pius V. addressed a letter ex- 
horting the Popish nobles to confederate and " deliver the king- 
dom from the most vile servitude of a woman's lust, and reduce 
it back to the ancient obedience of the Roman court." In his 
bull of damnation against her, after the most arrogant assertions 
of the Papal prerogatives, he pronounced her *' a heretic, and all 
her adherents; excommunicated her from his church, out of 
which, he said, there is no salvation ; declared her to be deprived 
of her pretended right to the kingdom, and of all titles, dominions, 
dignities, and privileges whatsoever, and commanded all her 
subjects not to obey her, or her orders, mandates, laws, and 
officers, under penalty of the same damnation." — Echard, Hist. 
Book 3. Chap. 1, 2. Mendham's Life and Pontificate of Pope 
Pius V. — To complete the wickedness. Pope Clement VIII. 
comiuanded Garnet, the Provincial of the English Jesuits, and 
one of the principal machinators of the Gunpowder Plot, and 



420 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

tlirough him all the Papists in England, after the death of that 
•'miserable woman, and obstinate heretic," as he denominated 
Elizabeth ; not to admit any successor to the throne, who would 
not defend the Popish hierarchy, and who would not take the 
usual oaths to fulfil all the wickedness which that inquisition 
implied. Those general principles were illustrated during the 
rebellion in 1570, when the Papists, before they were crushed 
displayed the cross as their ensign, destroyed every English 
Bible which they could find ; constantly heard mass to strengthen 
their treasons ; while the Priest who carried the " blessed stand- 
ard," pretended to have ample stores of the Papal bulls of abso- 
lution for all who would renounce the heretical queen, and take 
the oath of allegiance to the Pope. 

6. James L of England. — The command of Pope Clement 
VIII. to the English Jesuits, not to admit any Protestant to suc- 
ceed Elizabeth on the English throne, caused the attempt to ex- 
tinguish the Parliament, by blowing them up at the opening of 
the Session. There is no conceivable perfidy and perjury which 
were not committed and publicly defended, and imperatively 
commanded by the Popes of the seventeenth century, to extermi- 
nate Protestantism, and to restore Popery in Britain. — Popes 
Clement VIL, Paul V., Gregory XV., Urban VIII. , Innocent 
X, Alexander VIL, and Innocent XL, enjoined the practice of 
all treachery, intrigue, and crime, to consummate the design , 
and had not Providence permitted the protectorate of Oliver 
Cromwell to intervene between the reigns of Charles I. and 
Charles II., according to human judgment, Britain would have 
been doomed to bear the pontifical yoke, and the whole race of 
Protestants would have been extirpated. 

To that eventful period belongs that remarkable and desolating 
event in the modern history of Ireland, the deadly efl^ects of 
which, after a lapse of two hundred years, remain in nearly all 
their pristine force and reality. At the commencement of the 
Irish Massacre of 1641, during which 200,000 Protestants were 
butchered, the Priests celebrated mass, and gave the " breaden 
God'^ to no person who would not swear that they would torture 



42J 

and murder every Protestant ; which was an exact repetition of 
the fact in the case of the traitors of the Gunpowder Plot. Hal- 
ligan, a renowned and furious Popish Priest of that period, ead 
an excommunication in the masshouses against all who should 
relieve or conceal any of the English or Scotch inhabitants; and 
other anathemas were fulminated against all who did not engage 
in the insurrection and slaughter. 

On May 16, 1643, the Pope, Urban VIIL granted to the Irish 
rebels a general Jubilee as a reward for the massacre, with a full 
absolution for all the sins, which had previousl}^ been committed 
or might afterwards be perpetrated, however enormous, of every 
Papist who had taken part in the insurrection, and especially to 
those who had absolutely killed the Protestants with their own 
hands, or otherwise tortured them to death. — Bell's Pope's Fu- 
neral. — Macauley's History of England. 

7. Protestants in France during the years 1814 and 1820. — 
The treachery of the Bourbons, from the period when Henry 
IV. of France was assassinated until the revolution of 1789, 
was almost unceasing, except during the latter part of the reign 
of Louis XV I. The original perfid3r, by the violation of the edict 
of Nantz, continued during nearly seventy years, until the finai 
revocation by Louis XIV. One hundred years more elapsed, and 
the persecution of the helpless Huguenots was unintermitting. 
The French revolution drove the Papist Priests from their dark 
and polluted abodes — so that the French Protestants enjoyed 
comparative quietude ; which was especially consolidated du- 
ring the fourteen years ascendancy and government of Napo- 
leon. The same peace and security were guaranteed by Louis 
XVIII. ; but that bigoted, profligate despot, with his brother, 
Charles X., an equally loathsome, blood-thirsty debauchee, speed- 
ily verified, that Popery is unalterable, and impossible to be 
meliorated. For notwithstanding they were restored to the 
throne of France upon the sole condition, that the prior tolera- 
tion of the descendants of the Huguenots should not be infringed ; 
yet through the instigation of the Jesuits, the same female vio- 
lations, plunder of property, tortures of the Christians, and mur- 
35 



422 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

ders of the defenceless Protestants, men, women, and youth of 
both sexes, were perpetrated, as during anterior periods — and it 
was publicly avowed at Nismes by the Papist magistrates and 
soldiers, and in many other towns and districts where the Pro- 
testants were most numerous, that on August 24, 1815, the an- 
niversary of the Parisian massacre of the sixteenth century, 
they would celebrate that day with a similar extirpation of the 
living Heretics, as their ancestors had experienced. If no other 
fact existed, every sincere Christian must rejoice, that a merci- 
ful and righteous Providence has doomed that direful Boiirbon 
family to condign infamy ; and it may be hoped, to eventual 
oblivion. 

Massacres. — In the accomplishment of their designs to con- 
solidate the Papal power, and to extirpate those who discarded 
the pontifical usurpations, it is almost impossible to determine, 
w^hether injustice or perfidy, impolicy or cruelty, have ever pre- 
dominated. Neither age, nor sex, nor rank, nor dignity, nor 
talents, nor condition, nor piety, has realized either favour or 
protection. Thousands have been attainted and proscribed, by 
the same general act which doomed whole towns, cities, pro- 
vinces, and kingdoms, to utter misery and desolation. In some 
instances, myriads and millions of people were marked as one 
grand hecatomb, to be sacrificed to the Pope's ambition or rage. 
With an insatiable cruelty, which exceeded that of the monster 
Caligula, who wished that all the citizens of Rome had but one 
neck, that with one stroke he might exterminate them ; the dia- 
bolical chiefs of the Papal hierarchy have sought and endeav- 
oured to depopulate the whole race of those whom they de- 
nounced as heretical, but who were " the saints and martyrs of 
Jesus," that all existence and memorial of them might be effaced 
from the earth. 

That object would have been fully accomplished, if Popish 
leagues, conspiracies, perjuries, edicts, bulls, croisades, armies, 
and armadas, could have effected their malicious and sanguinary 
designs. Who can recount all the insidious stratagems, the 
bloody treasons, and the horrific massacres, which the Papists 



423 

devised to exterminate Christians, and thereby to eradicate the 
recollection of the Gospel from the earth ? Who can enumerate 
the number, — who can depict the interior of the gloomy dun- 
geons, the inexorable tribunals, the inconceivable tortures, and 
the infernal fires of that terrestrial Pandemonium, the Inquisi- 
tion? What imagination can even pretend to grasp the incessant 
disregard of every engagement which in any form can impede 
their purposes ? Promises, covenants, treaties, edicts, laws, and 
oaths, are always violated and nullified ; and the most nefarious 
abrogation of them is adjudged to be meritorious. All those 
crimes have been perpetrated, and every connected misery has 
been inflicted, not only by the unalterable dogmas of the Pa- 
pacy, but with the express approbation of their ecclesiastical 
councils, and sanctioned by pontifical authority. 

" To the force of that exterminating principle, and the delu- 
sive influence of that intemperate zeal, every thing else has been 
obliged to yield. It has overpowered all the principles of reli- 
gion, reason, truth, equity, honour, and humanity. By it, na- 
tions have acted in direct contradiction to their own interests. 
All the most powerful natural instincts, all the tenderest sensi- 
bilities of the human heart, have vanished at its mandate. With- 
out even knowing the scriptures, in the most literal manner it 
has coerced the fulfilment of its predictions. " The brother 
shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child ; 
and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause 
them to be put to death. Matthew 10: 21, 35, 36. A man shall 
be at variance against his father ; and the daughter against her 
mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 
and a man's foes shall be they of his own household." It is a 
cardinal doctrine of the Romanists, and has always been prac* 
tically exemplified in the history of the Popedom, that fathers 
and mothers, without apparent emotion or regret, have abandoned 
their daughters to the lusts, and their sons to the fury of the 
Roman Priestly tormentors and executioners. Papists and Pro- 
testants have equally and simultaneously been immolated to "its 
undistinguishing rage, and involved them indiscriminately in 



424 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

the same destruction, resolved that the Papists should perish, 
rather than their supposed rebellious heretics should escape. 
At the same time, the most audacious felons have been delivered 
from punishment, merely for pretending to abjure Protestantism 
and to vow fidelity to the Pope ; and thus they verified their ex- 
act conformity to the Jews, who liberated Barabbas the robber, 
and crucified the Lord of glory. Popery has transformed men 
into demons. For it has so debased the character and dis- 
positions of those who have imbibed its spirit, and who have 
been swayed by its authority, and who have obeyed its com- 
mands, that the vassals of the Pope, and the Dominicans, and the 
Jesuits, ever most wantonly delight in the infliction of every 
species of human misery. They exult in the invention and ap- 
plication of a boundless and interminable variety of pain. In 
torments, which only the author of Popery, Satan him. self could 
have inspired, they constantly and outrageously triumph ; while 
harmony, knowledge, purity, and piety, they ever hate and revile. 

The ensuing additional miscellaneous facts, in illustration of 
the general topics comprised in the Popish persecutions, verify, 
that every possible measure has been adopted by the Roman 
hierarchy, at successive periods, to eradicate freedom, morality, 
and the Christian religion, with all its professors, from the 
world. 

During the reign of James II. of England, nearly two thou- 
sand five hundred of the higher ranks of the people were ad- 
judged to be attainted, their property to be confiscated, and them- 
selves to be killed. — Popery always the same. Page 10. 

The Duke of Alva was Governor of the Netherlands during 
six years; and that cruel bigot boasted, that his minions had 
killed eighteen thousand Protestants by hanging and beheading 
them ; besides countless multitudes who were massacred by 
his military ruffians. He pillaged the inhabitants of those 
provinces, of nearly twenty millions of dollars per annum — and 
for his combined plunder and slaughter of the Reformed Dutch 
Protestants, an honorary statue was erected to comm.emorate his 
diabolical acts. — ^Jurieu, Apolog. pour la Reform. Vol. 2, p. 275. 



WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS." 425 

At the council of Trent a conspiracy was formed against all 
the Protestant nations, with the express design to extirpate them. 
They began with the French Huguenots ; but Divine Provi- 
dence rendered their nefarious scheme abortive. The next ob- 
jects marked for death, were the Genevese, and the Swiss Protest- 
ant cantons. After them, the Lutherans in Germany, Denmark, 
and Sweden, were doomed to excruciation and massacre. Then 
all the confederated power which the Roman Pontiffs could 
wield, was to be concentrated upon the British islands. To con- 
summate that deadly project, the Papal Ecclesiastics agreed to 
devote a large portion of their annual revenues, until the last 
vestige of the Reformation was entirely eradicated. But '* he 
that sitteth in the heavens laughed; the Lord had them in de- 
rision." — Discours de Conjurations de la Maison de Guise. — 
Satyre Menippe. Vol. iii. 

The massacre of Merindol and Cabrieres occurred in 1545, 
at the command of PopePaul III. Twenty-four villages were 
burnt to ashes. SeveraTthousands of the Waldenses were killed; 
and multitudes of the fugitives were starved while endeavouring 
to escape to Geneva _ and Switzerland. All the men of Ca- 
brieres who were captured, amounting to nine hundred, were 
collected in a large field, and there butchered piece-meal, and 
their mangled remains left scattered on the ground; while the wo- 
men, after the usual infamous Popish violations, were shut up in 
barns with straw, and burned. Those atrocious crimes were at- 
tended with cruelty so horrific, that even the bigoted blood-thirsty 
monarchs were agonized with remorse, when they heard the 
woful narrative. That merciless decree, which devoted all those 
Christians in Merindol and Cabrieres to instant and simultaneous 
death, was executed under the command of the President of 
Oppede; of whom the Jesuit Maimbourg, in his History of Cal- 
vinism, narrates,, that when some of those, of whom " the world 
was not worthy ;" and who were " destitute, afflicted, tormented, 
on the mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth," sent 
a request, that they might be permitted to pas§ in safety to a 
foreign country, that chieftain replied — *' / will take care that 
36* 



426 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

none of you shall escape ; for I tvill send you all to dwell in 
hell with^the devils.^^ Some years after, that Papist monster 
was tried before the Parliament of Paris for his cruel wicked- 
ness, which Maimbourg avers, "nothing can exceed;" and af- 
ter fifty successive hearings, he was acquitted, because he "acted 
only according to the orders of the French king and the Ro- 
man Prelates." 

Not one instance can be discovered in all modern history, 
in which the doctrine of the council of Constance, " no faith 
shall be kept with heretics,^^ has not practically been illustrated. 
From the general pacification which was made by the Emperor 
Charles V. with the German Lutherans in 1553, the Waldenses 
have frequently been the subjects of that disruption of the most 
sacred compacts, which is an inseparable characteristic of the 
Pontifical governments. In the sixteenth century, nine succes- 
sive treaties were flagrantly cancelled in the most treacherous 
manner. The massacre in the valleys of Piedmont, which oc- 
curred in 1655, and which was arrested in consequence of the 
magnanimous interposition and intimidating menaces of Oliver 
Cromwell, was commenced and prolonged by some of the most 
profound specimens of Jesuitical deception which history re- 
cords. The persecution of 1663 was not less an outrageous in- 
fringement of the treaty of peace. The petty tyrant of Savoy, 
with the aid of Lewis XIV. king of France, in 1686, after the 
revocation of the edict of Nantz, was so successfully resisted by 
the Vaudois, that he made a feigned peace with them ; but as 
soon as the Protestants were returned to their scattered habita- 
tions, he assailed them with his furious bigots, killed about 
twelve thousand of them, and several thousands more perished, 
through want and other miseries, in endeavouring to escape to 
Switzerland. Had not the British Nonconformists interposed 
on their behalf, it seems as if the last vestige of the original 
" two witnesses" at that time must have been eradicated. Their 
later sufferings from their cruel, treacherous Despots, at inter- 
vals, have not been less acute and ruinous. — Seasonable Advice 
to all PrQtestants, Pa^-e 0» 



WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS.'' 427 

To the Protestants of Poland were solemnly granted the public 
protection, and the enjoy ment of peace in their faith and wor- 
ship. In 1573, an irrevocable law was enacted, that no person 
should reign in Poland, who would not swear to preserve lib- 
erty of conscience, and the free exercise of religion : and that 
statute received additional confirmation in 1586, 1587, 1632; 
and by the treaty of Oliva. Notwithstanding, through the in- 
stigation of the Jesuits, the Polish Protestants were so contin- 
ually plundered and killed, that the survivors expatriated them- 
selves ; and after the city of Lesna was burned, and its Chris- 
tian inhabitants slaughtered by the malicious instigation of the 
Roman Priests, and the Protestants of Thorn also Vv^ere crushed, 
and the " Dissidents," as they w^ere usually denominated, were 
declared incapable of all public office in that kingdom; Protest- 
antism in Poland almost expired. — Lesnas Excidium. 

Nearly all the European wars which occurred, from the pe- 
riod of the Reformation to the French revolution of 1789, du- 
ring two hundred and seventy years, were the offspring of Papal 
treachery and Jesuitical artifices. At the diet of Ratisbon, in 
1532, a peace w^as made between the disputants in Germany, 
which was speedily violated through the command of Pope 
Paul III. That infringement of the national concord, produced 
almost unceasing commotions and wide spread misery, until the 
treaty of 1553, between the Emperor Charles V. and Maurice 
of Saxony, which was ratified by the diet of Augsburg. Afler 
some years, the persecutions in Bohemia and Hungary were re- 
newed. The principles and designs of that direful overthrow 
of Christianity in those countries, can be comprehended from 
the common language of the Jesuits at that period : " Heretics 
must be dealt with as madmen and children, from whom, if you 
design to get a knife, you must show them something else, 
though you never intend to give it to them." That diabolical 
dogma enkindled in Europe " the thirty years^ warr which ter- 
minated in the peace of Westphalia. In every period si]!ice, 
when it can be done without exciting alarm among the Protest- 
ants, the monster of Romish persecution has never slept, nor rd» 



428 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

Strained his ferocious arm, except when he was afraid to smite 
his victims. So that in Silesia, Bohemia, and Hungary, until 
the conquest of the former by Prussia ; and always in the latter 
countries, Protestants have realized " mourning, lamentation, and 
wo." — Heiss Hist, de I'Empire, Book 4. 

From the first public edict, granted in 1561, in favour of the 
Huguenots, until the revocation of the edict of Nantz in 1685, 
with the exception of the period when Henry IV. restrained 
the unwilling demon W^hich impelled the Dominicans and Je- 
suits — it was the unvarying experience of those Christians, that 
Roman Priests are treacherous as Judas, and cruel as Pharaoh. 
*' The devil himself never produced any more base and hellish 
wiles, than the long train of perfidies connected with those dole- 
ful French tragedies." — Jurieu's Apology, Book 2. — Memoirs 
of Castlenau. — Gluick's Synodicon. — Histoire de I'Edit du Nantz. 
— Persecutions and Oppressions of Protestants in France. 

The desolation of countries, through Popish persecution, com- 
prises facts which, were they not so certainly attested, would be 
incredible. One hundred thousand Flemings, with their prop- 
erty, departed from Flanders into Protestant Germany within a 
few days after the persecutions began under the Duke of Alva. 
Many of the present large cities in England are inhabited chiefly 
by the descendants of the Reform-ed Dutch, who fled from tor- 
ture and death in Holland during the reign of Elizabeth. — Tem- 
ple's Remarks. — Hist, des Pais Bas. Vol. ii. Book 8. 

Philip II. of Spain declared, a short period before his decease, 
that during the short reign of Charles IX. of France, he had 
expended four millions of ounces of gold; and from the year 
1585 to 1593, six millions of ounces of gold. That in the civil 
wars of France and the Netherlands, on the English Armada, 
^and similar enterprises to sustain "the Beast and the False 
Prophet," he had squandered five hundred and ninety-four mil- 
lions of ducats, — a sum now equivalent to five thousand mil- 
lions of dollars; not only without even the smallest advantage to 
Spain, but to the utter impoverishment of the nation ; from the 
withering effects of which, it has never yet recovered, and never 



WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS." 429 

will be released, until the curse of Popery shall have been ex- 
cluded from the European southern peninsula. 

During the civil war in France, for twelve years prior to the 
promulgation of the edict of Nantz, one million of lives were 
sacrificed. The " Politique du Clerge de France," 1681, stated, 
that through the royal edicts, in the course of the preceding fif- 
teen years, eighty thousand Huguenots had fled from Normandy, 
Picardy, and the neighbouring provinces. After the revocation 
of the edict of Nantz, and when the universal cry of the Papist 
priests and of the *' armed and booted apostles," their faithful 
coadjutors, was ''Death or the Mass P^ — seventeen thousand 
and five hundred Huguenots passed into Lausanne. The north- 
ern parts of Germany, a large portion of London, and numerous 
other places in England, were inhabited by the Huguenot refu- 
gees. Some escaped to America. Not less than five hundred 
thousand adults removed from France ; and including the wealth 
which they carried away, the manufacturing arts, the knowl- 
edge of which they dispersed, and the loss of an equal number 
of Christians, by torture and death, that country has never yet 
recovered the effects of that dreadful catastrophe. — Quick's Sy- 
nodicom. — Voltaire Siecle. Vol. ii. Page 209. That was in ex- 
act conformity with the decision of the Empress Glueen of Hun- 
gary, in 1751, whose commissioners announced to some Lu- 
therans then confined and chained in dungeons — " The Queen 
would rather that the land should hear thorns and thistles^ than 
that it should be ploughed by Lutherans.'''' — Spirit of Popery, 
page 15. 

When the croisaders under the Pope's legate, besieged Beziers, 
the Earl, who was a Romanist, desired that barbarian not to 
storm the city, and thus subject the Papists to the same extermi- 
nation to which he had doomed the Albigenses. Seven thou- 
sand of the Papists, with the Roman Priests and the monks, 
w^ere collected in the large masshouse; and when the croisaders 
had slain about sixty thousand Protestants, the Papists, headed 
by their Priests, marched out with their banners and crosses, 
singing *' Te Deum laudamui^ for the death of the Heretics — 



430 "THE WOMAN DRUNKEN 

but the legate's butchers killed the whole of them upon the spot; 
that Popish ecclesiastic crying out — " Caedite eos omnes ; novit 
enim Dominus qui sunt ejus — slay them all ; for the Lord know- 
eth them who are his!" When the slaughter was finished, the 
whole city, with the corpses, were consumed in one general con- 
flagration. Not a single person of either sex, young or old, 
of Beziers, survived that tremendous visitation of the Beast's fe- 
rocity. 

The tortures which Roman Inquisitors and Priests devised, 
to inflict their malignant rage upon the Christians whom they 
sacrificed to satisfy their Lord God the Pope, disclose the dia- 
bolical character of Romanism, such as it would be in the Uni- 
ted States of America, if the Roman Priesthood swayed. 

The poisonous spirit and principles of Popery stifle all nat- 
ural tenderness, and spoil the most amiable dispositions; for 
gentle and delicate women, "timorous things who start at feath- 
ers and fly from insects," when animated by the demon of Po- 
pery, have become daring persecutors, exulting in carnage, and 
surveying with delight streams of Christian blood, and piles of 
naked mangled human bodies, or inhaling with greediness the 
smoke of the Auto da Fe, and the effluvia of a roasting Heretic : 
thus demonstrating, that they who are intoxicated with the 
golden cup of Rome's filthiness and abominations, and bewitched 
by the sorceries of her enchanted wine, have imbibed a vindic- 
tive and treacherous spirit, not less sanguinary than the scar- 
let and purple tincture, in which is arrayed the " Mystery ; 
Babylon the Great; Mother of the abominations of 
THE earth !" 

In thus perusing the authentic records of the Popedom, we 
are filled with the most agitating emotions. We behold the 
" scarlet coloured Mother of Harlots, seated upon the Beast full 
of names of blasphemy, and drunk with the blood of the saints, 
and of the martyrs of Jesus." All the evils, and anguish, and 
desolation, and carnage, which Christians ever have suffered, 
were inflicted without the shadow of an excuse or the semblance 
of provocation — ^their only crime, that they would not ** worship 



431 

the Dragon which gave power to the Beast, and would not re- 
ceive the mark, or name, or number of the Beast in their right 
hands or in their foreheads." When we survey the gloomy- 
castles of despair, whence march forth the masked victims for 
the Auto da Fe, and who were pillaged, defiled, tortured, and 
slaughtered from generation to generation in countless myriads, 
the reflecting mind spontaneously asks — who were those faith- 
ful and unflinching witnesses, hecatombs of whom were immo- 
lated as a peace-offering to the Popish Moloch? — Whose life 
was thus effused to glut, with river-like streams, the insatiable 
blood-thirstiness of the Mother of Harlots, that her golden cup 
of filthiness and abominations might be replenished ? They 
were Christians who would read the scriptures — who would not 
believe the legendary traditions which were invented by the 
monastic forgers — who would not acknowledge "the Man of 
Sin and Son of Perdition" to be " Lord God upon earth;" and 
that he is supreme in god-like jurisdiction, and unerring as di- 
vine infallibility — who conscientiously believed, that black is 
not white, that vice is not virtue, that_superstitious mummery ife 
not spiritual devotion, and that a woman drunken with Christian 
blood, is not the image of the holy and philanthropic church of 
the Lord Jesus — who strenuously affirmed, that the infinite and 
eternal Creator could not be made, eaten and swallowed, by a 
licentious Romish Priest at any moment an ignorant idolater 
chose to give him a pecuniary trifle for the development of his 
intention — who obstinately refused to swear that bread is wine, 
and wine is bread, and that the same bread and wine are a non- 
entity — who resolutely proclaimed, that the Roman Hierarchy 
is Antichrist, that the mass wafer is an idol, and that purgatory 
is a fable — who could not be forced to worship stone and wooden 
blocks for infinite wisdom and omnipotence — ^and who seriously 
believed, that a sincere disciple in Jesus the Son of God will 
enter life eternal, without the intercession of the Virgin Mary ; 
that the expiatory wounds of Saint Francis are a strong delu- 
sion ; and that the supererogatory works of Saint Dominic are 
a * 'lying wonder." 



4|f **THE WOMAN DRUNKEN WITH BLOOD.'* 

It should be remembered, that all the laws, and decretals, and 
canons, which the Roman Court ever have enacted, are yet in 
full force. In the anathemas which are annually fulminated 
against the Waldenses, and all other Protestants, by the bull 
"/?t CcEna Bomini,^^ we read the character which "the Beast 
and the False Prophet" and their ten vassal kings attach to all 
Protestants. When that Bult of curses is announced at Rome, 
the Pope hurls his lighted torch to the ground, which is then 
extinguished to give greater sanction to the anathema ; and a 
cannon is discharged at the same moment, which the Papists of 
Rome are taught solemnly to believe, " snakes all the heretics in 
the world to tremble.''' That is designed to teach the fearful doom 
which awaits Protestants, if those treacherous and ruthless con- 
spirators should ever regain that ascendancy, by which they can 
exercise their form.er unhallowed predominance, and execute 
their despotic infuriated menaces. 

From the unvarying doctrines and canons of the Popedom, 
as daringly reasserted by the present Pontiff, Gregory XVI. in 
1832; and from the unrepealed laws and sanguinary edicts 
of the Romish Plierarchy, and the Papal Governments, which 
are even now^ occasionally enforced wath undiminished barbarity; 
it is demonstrable, that Popery is not one jot less audaciously 
arrogant and unrelenting, in the nineteenth century, than w^hen 
Pope Gregory VII. with his foot struck off the crown from the 
Emperor Henry's head, and that at this period it is equally in- 
tolerant and persecuting, as when Popes Innocent III. and VIII. 
proclaimed the croisades for the utter extermination of the Albi- 
gensi^n Christians, the Waldenses, and the Bohemian Brethren, 
with all their adherents and friends. Therefore, the reformed 
nations who foster and encourage Popery and the Jesuits, are 
chargeable with the criminal infatuation of wantonly rejecting 
the Gospel oi Christ, that noblest boon with which a merciful 
Providence has enriched them; and by discarding every in- 
stinctive solicitude for their self-preservation, they wilfully coa- 
lesce to facilitate their own direful overthrow, and to insure the 
indignation and punishment of the Judge and Lord of all. 



CONCLUSION. 



The preceding *' Illustrations of Popery," with the additional 
articles in the Appendix, are deduced almost exclusively from the 
Romish authors and annalists. They present a succinct and au- 
thentic development of the Western Antichristian Apostacy in 
its most ostensible and hideous portraiture. It was not requisite 
to unfold at large the sanguinary practices of the Papal Hie- 
rarchy, because that portion of the pontifical curse, through the 
medium of the various editions of "the Book of Martyrs." is 
more generally accessible than any other of the topics which 
appertain to the " Mystery of Iniquity." 

It has been the predominant design in the whole of this work, 
not only to elucidate accurately the character and spirit of Popery ; 
but in opposition to the grand modern " strong delusion," to de- 
monstrate, that whatever Popery once was, it is now, and that it 
ever will be unchangeable; or in the language of prophecy, 
" the Beast that was, and yet is, ascended out of the bottomless 
pit, and shall go into perdition." Revelation 17: 8. The belief 
that Popery is altered or meliorated is the cardinal fraud with 
which the Jesuits are now deceiving modern Protestants. That 
idea involves a self-evident contradiction. How can infallible truth 
be corrected? How can perfection be amended ? The insinu- 
ation itself is a gross abuse of language ; and if the correctness 
of the Jesuit phraseology be allowed, it follows, that the court of 
Rome are neither infallible nor holy ; and consequently that all 
their pretensions to be a part of the Christian church are a gross 
imposture. 

It is equally a subject of astonishment and humiliation, that 
a proposition which confutes itself, should nevertheless be gene- 
rally admitted without dispute, as oracular, not only by the 
%7 



411 ILLrSTRATIONS OF POPERY. 

thoughtless or sceptical worldling, but also by the professed disci- 
ple of the Reformation, and the Christian believer. The ante- 
cedent chapters demonstrate that the corner-stone and the cement 
of the whole modern Babylonish superstructure are the assumed 
dogmas, that the Roman Pontiff is supreme in jurisdiction, and 
infallible in decision ; and that the Papal ritual and enactments 
are immutable. 

A most pernicious difference exists between the Reformers of 
the sixteenth century, and the Protestants of this age, in two as- 
pects. — 1. There is a strange and infatuated perversion of lan- 
guage, which through Jesuit craftiness has become vernacular; 
and from the operation of which, the plain truths of the Gospel, 
and the holy principles that were inculcated in the first protests 
against the arrogant usurpations, and the deadly enactments and 
requirements of the court of Rome, have become almost oblite- 
rated. — 2. That credulity which receives almost w^ithout inquiry 
the most grossly revolting absurdities and fallacies which are pro- 
mulged by Roman Priests ; and the equally astounding scept- 
icism in reference to incontrovertible Protestant testimony, com- 
bine one of the most melancholy and appalling characteristics ot 
modern Christians. 

It is perfectly demonstrable, that no small proportion of the 
delusions which are so rife among nominal Protestants, respect- 
ing the genuine attributes of Popery, is the result of the use of 
terms, not in the meaning applied to them in the first century ot 
the Christian church, but in the sense that they have obtained 
after the lapse of seventeen centuries, and clogged with the ac- 
cumulated stultiloquence of every heresy superadded to the Ro- 
mish " all deceivableness of unrighteousness." It would require a 
volume fully to elucidate this momentous topic in reference to the 
assumed ecclesiastical prerogatives of the Papal despotism ; but 
all persons conversant with the phraseology of the Apostles and 
the Evangelists are convinced, that the appellatives, Church, 
Bishop, Presbytery, and their cognate terms, as used by the pri- 
mitive Christians, and as frequently understood, are just as contra- 
dictory as an idolatrous Masshouse to " the house of prayer ;" or 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF POPERY. 435 

the triple crowned Pontiff of Rome to the compassionate Jesus^ 
when he was washing his disciples' feet; or as a bench of Popish 
Inquisitors to Peter, James, and John. That injudicious and de- 
ceptive mode of using Christian language must be corrected ; or 
all the efforts of Protestants to counteract Romanism will be 
powerless to restrain Popery, as the green withes with which the 
Philistines attempted to bind Samson. 

The Priests of the Romish hierarchy always and everywhere 
assert, that their ecclesiastical system is without error, and im- 
possible to be changed. Every Popish book of all countries, 
and by members of their various monastic orders, sanctioned by 
Councils, and ratified by Popes, constantly affirm the same tenet. 
In behalf of that pretended claim, they plead that the Romish 
ecclesiastical authority is q^ tht greatest antiquity, that it never 
has been essentially altereti, and that it does not admit of amend- 
ment. It is thei^ '«.cr«ygant and uniform boast: one of their 
strongholds frorr- >.iich they eject their ungodly missiles against 
the Lamb ; and notwithstanding they are disbelieved. The large 
majority who assent to transubstantiation, purgatory, and num- 
berless similar vain traditions, repeat that dogma : and yet Protes- 
tants will not credit the most solemn and defensive asseverations 
of Popes, Cardinals, Prelates, and Inquisitors. Further to un- 
fold the inexplicable nature of that incredulity, it must be re- 
membered, that the Reformed Controvertists have proved beyond 
all cavil or doubt, that Popery is ever identical and unchange- 
able, in conformity with the Romish grand eulogy upon their 
apostate system of impiety and unholiness. Consequently, 
the scepticism of professed Protestants involves this remarka- 
ble anomaly, that it will not allow the validity of any testimony 
which is offered concerning Romanism, either by its adherents, 
or by its opponents; and therefore Jesuits are more emboldened 
in inculcating deceptions and vice ; and Protestants become in- 
toxicated by drinking of the "golden cup full of abominations," 
with which "the Mother of Harlots" allures them into stupe- 
faction, and ensnares them into captivity. 

Another specious and pestilential delusion exists in our repub- 



436 ILLUSTRATIONS OF POPERY. 

lie. Many persons who admit that Popery, in anterior periods, 
and in European countries, hascomhined "the mystery of ini- 
quity and the working of Satan," fancy that it is of an opposite 
character, and produces totally different effects in the nineteenth 
century on the continent of America. That wicked position, in 
all its blinding reality and awful consequences, is that grand dis- 
tinctive characteristic of Popery so emphatically delineated by 
the Apostle Paul in one word; ''ToipsvSog, the lie!" 2 Thessa- 
lonians 2 : 11. Two indescribable evils flow from the general 
credence which is given to it. Through its operation, Popery 
is indefinitely promnlged ; and the efforts of Protestants to coun- 
teract it, are paralyzed, because they are pronounced unnecessary ; 
reviledas uncharitable and persecuting, and opposed with the most 
virulent pertinacity, as if the defence of the rights of man, liberty of 
conscience, civil and religious freedom, and boundless evangelical 
philanthropy, is inconsistent with the character of a disciple of 
Jesus, and incompatible with the duties and obligations of the 
Christian Ministry ; that " strong delusion" must be dispelled; 
or the municipal institutions of the United States will be under- 
mined, if not destroyed. 

The prevalent idea that Popery is a modification of Christi- 
anity, only deteriorated by many conjoined ceremonial and child- 
ish absurdities, and debased by more immoral tendencies than 
Protestants admit, is a source of widely desolating evil. On the 
contrary, Romanism is an artful contrivance to tyrannize over 
all mankind, under the mask, and with the hallowed and attrac- 
tive title of the Redeemer of the world. It is a political conspi- 
racy of ecclesiastic unfoldings, the haughtiest despotism and 
the most servile and corrupting bondage. In every age and 
coimtry, where Popery has swayed,, it has been productive of 
only unmixed evil ; for it has evinced the detestable character of 
its constituent principles, and the tremendous implacability of its 
ferocious spirit, by transforming the dominions over which it 
swayed its iron and ruthless sceptre, into one general arena of 
ignorance, licentiousness, carnage, and blood. 

All pretended pacification between Protestants and Papists is , 



ILLU3TRATiOX3 OF POPEHY. 437 

a phantom. It is a fact attested by the concurring evidence of 
three hundred years, and of every nation of Europe, and on the 
American Continent; that permanent cordiality between the 
vassals of the Roman court, and those who reject its impious 
claims, never has existed ; and it can easily be demonstrated, that 
those persons cannot coalesce. The Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthi- 
ans 6 : 14 — 17, infallibly determined that principle — *' Be ye not 
unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship 
hath righteousness with unrighteousness ? and what communion 
hath light with darkness ? and what concord hath Christ with 
Belial ? or what part hath he who believeth with an Infidel ? 
and what agreement hath the temple of God v/ith idols ? Where- 
fore come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch 
not the unclean, saith the Lord." In this aspect, it is of no im- 
portance whether the Protestant or the Papist is correct. It is 
certain that they both apply those pungent inquiries, and that 
sacred admonition to the opposite community ; and therefore by 
their own avowal, and by their continuous and universal prac- 
tice, they perennially declare, that they are at the Antipodes. 
Papists aver that Protestants are " Heretics accwrsed,^^ who 
ought to be burnt in this world, as the guarantee of their ever- 
lasting abode, " where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not 
quenched" — and Protestants declare, that Papists are Idolaters, 
and *'the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruc- 
tion ;" and that the honour of Gad, the glory of the Redeemer, 
the prosperity of the church, and the salvation of souls, with the 
conversion of the world, are indissolubly connected with the exter- 
mination of Popery. Protestants and Papists therefore are not 
only utterly irreconcilable, but an energetic and sleepless strife 
must ever exist among them, until one of the contending parties 
is extinguished: either Papists w^ll be converted and submit to 
the sceptre of Immanuel, or Protestants will be silenced by the 
Romish Crusaders, or by the fire of the Dominican Inquisitors, 
with which they glut " the Woman drunken with the blood of 
the Saints, and with the bjood of the martyrs of Jesus." There- 
fore the Popish Controversy differs from all other polemical dis- 
37* 



438 ILLUSTRATIONS OF POPERY. 

cussions, both in its intrinsic importance, and its overwhelming 
results. The severance between the champions of evangelical 
truth and liberty, and the combatants for the pontifical heresies 
and despotism, is decisive, and wide as "a great gulf fixed'' be- 
tween them, impassable : for if Popery be an accurate delinea- 
tion of "pure religion and undefiled," then all persons who do 
not submit to the Roman yoke, are audacious rebels against Je- 
hovah : and if Protestants correctly interpret the holy scriptures, 
then Popery is a blasphemous imposture, replete with the most 
direful curse and anguish for mankind, both '* in this world and 
in the world to come." 

It is confidently believed that these " Illustrations of Popery" 
will enlighten the public mind, by confuting the generally preva- 
lent scepticism ; by assisting to restore the appropriate biblical 
phraseology, and the correct application of those words with 
which the primitive Reformers so aptly delineated the " falling 
away of the man of sin and the son of perdition ;" and by ex- 
posing the destructive Jesuitical frauds by which our churches 
have been seduced to " call things hy wrong names,^^ until we 
are almost obnoxious to the prophetical denunciation ; Isaiah 5 : 
20 — '* Wo unto them that put bitter for sweet, and sw^eetTor bit- 
ter ; that call evil good, and good evil ; that put darkness for 
light, and light for darkness!'* 

The volume is now presented to American Protestants with 
earnest solicitude, that the beneficial objects w^hich it proposes to 
effect may be fully accomplished; and with *' all prayer and sup- 
plication in the spirit," that the " Lord of Lords, and King of 
Kings" will expedite the glorious day, when "O Ayo/xo?^ that 
Wicked," shall be consumed *' wuth the spirit of his mouth," 
and shall be destroyed "with the brightness of his coming,"— 
Alleluia! Amen. 

New York, May 4, 1836. 



APPENDIX 

TO THE 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF POPERY; 

COMPRISING 

I. TAXATIO PAPALIS; OR THE ROxMAN TAX-BOOKS p\&e 440 

IL JESUITISM 446 

IIL DECREES AND CANONS OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT 456 

IV. EXACT CONFORMITY OF POPERY AND PAGANISM 498 

V. ROmSH CEREMONIES 521 



TAXATIO PAPALIS; 



THE ROMAN TAX BOOKS. 

TAX^ CANCELLARL^ APOSTOLIC.E; AND TAX.^ SACR.E 
PENITENTIARLE APOSTOLICE. 

" Veil a I ia nobi.? 
Templa, Sacerdotes, Aliaria, Sacra, CoronaB, 
Ignes, Thura, Preces, CoBlum est venale, Deusque." 

Baptist Mantuan Calamit. 3. 



In the whole compass of Literature, there scarcely exist any books more 
curious, and more important; more numerous in editions, and less con- 
cealed for some time after their first appearance, and more rare in modern 
ages; more indispensable and profitable to their real parent, who yet most 
positively and earnestly disowns his progen]/, in defiance of undeniable 
proof of filiation ; and of which the accounts are more defective, confused, 
erroneous, and unsat sfactory, than those extant of the two books bearing 
the titles of Tax-s Caxcellaki.2 Apostolic^, and Tax.e Sacr^s Pckni- 

TENTIARI.E ApOSTOLICE. 

The power of absolving from sin in general, or from any particular sin, 
upon considerations deemed equivalent or satisfactory, comes under the gen- 
eral head of Indulgences, which the Pontiffs of Rome claim the prerogative 
of dispensing. The Indulgence known by the name of Jubilee, and which 
from being at first celebrated at the interval of fifty years, then at that of 
thirty-three, and afterwards, which has continued with one exception to the 
present time, at that of a quarter of a century, was first instituted by Pope 
Boniface Vlil. in the year 1300. In the short Bull, appointing the first Jubi- 
lee, the Pontiff affirms ; that anciently to the visiters of Peter's Church there 
were conceded great remissions and indulgences of sins — that those are re- 
newed by him — and that this, and ever}^ future hundredth year, he has 
" granted and will grant, not only a full and abundant, but the fullest pardon 
of all the sins," of those who are truly penitent and confess. The encourage- 
ment is added, that the more frequent and devout the visits, the more effectual. 

The next bull to the same purpose v/as issued by Pope Clement VI. at the 
distance of only half a^ century ; for to that periodhis concern that Christen- 
dom should not continue to be deprived of so areat a blessing, had reduced it. 
Thai instrument declares and describes, by the claimant of the power him- 
self, the source whence that power is derived. "Christ," says that Pontifl^J 
" shed, not one drop of blood only, which, from his divinity, had sufficed for 
the universal redemption of man ; but a copious flood, which he would not 
have to be useless and superfluous, but to constitute an inexhaustible treasury 
for the militant church. That treasure he did not put in a napkin or hide in a 
field, but committed to Peter, the key-keeper of heaven, and to his successors, 
his vicars on earth, to be prudently dispensed to the faithful : and for proper 
and reasonable causes, at one time for the total, at another for the_ partial 
remission of the temporal punishment due for sin, as well generally as spe- 
ciallv, in conformity with the known will of God, to be mercifully adminia- 
tered to those who are truly penitent and confess. To the accumulation of 
which treasure the merits of the holy mother of God. and of all the elect, 
from the first just one to the last, are known to contribute ; of the consump- 
tion or diminution of which not the least fear need be entertained, as well on 
account of the infinite merits of Christ j. as from the consideration; that the 



ROMAN TAX BOOKS. 441 

greater number of persons are attracted to righteousness by; the application of 
It, so much is the amount of the merits increased." By this ingenious hypo- 
thesis, tlie same pipe which drains, replenishes the reservoir. Those are the 
most authentic expositions of the papal claims of indulgence. — Corpus Juris 
Canonici, Extravag. Commun. Lib. 5. Tit. 9. Cap. 1, 2. 

To that power of granting indulgence, must be assigned the pecuniary ab- 
solution, or the commutation of penance for money, which is the foundation 
of the Taxae. Simply to enjoin penance, and to absolve the offender on the 
performance of it, is an exercise of ecclesiastic authority, emanatmg from the 
power of the keys ; but to allow those to be commuted, to be compounded for, 
or redeemed, by money, is not an act of discipline, but of indulgence. And 
that such a prerogative v/as claimed by the Popes, with respect to all sins, of 
whatsoever enormity, is evident from the ancient Penitentiary Canons. 

Theodorus, who was ?-ent from Rome to be Archbishop of Canterbury, in 
the seventh century, was the first who introduced Penitentiary Canons from 
the East into the West. His Pcenitentiale is extant. Beda, also, has given a 
work of that description, under the title, De Remediis Peccatonim. The 
penance which he enjoined for all sorts, and the most infamous, of crimes; 
m case of inabiUty or disinclination to perform the penance, might be com- 
muted by almsgiving, which went into the hands of the Confessors. — Cap. 14, 

The next instance is supplied by the Pcenitentiale of Egbert, Archbishop of 
York, in the eighth century. That work is extant in Saxon and Latin ; and 
the demorahzing particularization of the vilest iniquity proves an advance in 
the compounding system. The different capabilities of the rich and the poor, 
and the penances, are accurately valued. The alms are to be divided into three 
parts ; one to the altar, the second for redeeming slaves, the third to be dis- 
tributed to ecclesiastical necessities. Then follows an enumeration of the 
Twelve Remissions of Sin.— Wilkins Cone. Mag. Brit. Vol. I. Pages 140, 
141, 192, 193. 

In the Penitentiale Romanum — a collection from more ancient books of 
the same name, strongly characterized by its ofFensiveness ; Tit. ix. Cap. 
xxvi — xxix. is the same pecuniary composition for dechned penance, adapted 
in the proportion of three to one, to the different means of the rich and the 
poor. 

The historians of the Reformation must be referred to for documents of the 
unlimited but obscure claims of the Pope respecting the power of pardon and 
indulgence, of absolution from the guilt as well as the punishment of sin, with 
conditions, all easily dispensed with, except tHe pecuniary one — of various 
forms of Indulgence, high-soundinc^ and enigmatic, as usual, and admitting 
of being avowed or disavowed at pleasure and according to circumstances. — 
Rome in the nineteenth century. Letters 41 — 52. These two things, however, 
are clear, that the instruments in question were intended to excite expecta- 
tions absolutely unbounded, and that they were desiofned to be as profitable, 
in a pecuniary view, as possible. The precise meaning, or any precision in 
the meaning at all, of the terms, or things, Indulgence, Plenary^ the actual 
benefit obtained, whether temporal, spiritual, or purgatorial, all, or some, and 
what, with other points, are matter of debate and uncertainty even v/ith the 
authors themselves. — Crashaw's Mittimus, Part 2. — Crashaw's Fiscus Papa- 
lis.— Collet Traite des Indulgences. Tom. 1 ; 25, 413. 

Enough, however, was certain for their purpose — and happily for or.rs 
likewise; for their easy security, or the necessity of the case, has left and 
perpetuated monuments, which it has long been impossible for ihem to de- 
stroy or conceal. 

Tne Roman Tax Tables are a considerable advance upon the simple Indul- 
gence ; for there, absolution for the grossest crimes — and for all crimes— is 
expressly set to sale at specified prices — absolution, or dispensation, or licence, 
&c., for Grossi, or floreni, or ducats. 

To what times or persons the origin of those small and 'precious volumes 
is to be assigned, it is perhaps impossible to determine. The least objection- 
able part, indicating otily unprincipled cupidity and rapacity, the Chanceri' 



442 ROMAN 

Taxes, may with certainty be traced back to Pope John XXII., who reigned 
at the beginning of tiie fourteenth century, and is celebrated by papal as well 
as other historians, for his immoderate extortion by the dexterous manage- 
ment of benefices, and by other means, and for the immense wealth which 
he accumulated and left behind him. — Ciaconii Vit. et Act. Pont. Tom. 2; 
395- The frequent and exclusive reference to the Liber Jo. XXfl, in Pope 
Leo Xth's Taxe Cane. Apost., published 1514, place the fact beyond a doubt ; 
and Polydore Virgil, Lib. 8, Cap. 2, expressly ascribes the origin of those 
Taxesjo him. 

. To the Penitentiary Canons succeeded the regular Tax books ; of which 
the first fifteen editions were issued at Rome, as is attested by Audiffredi, in 
a work avowedly enumerating those copies, and which volume is dedicated to 
" Pius VI. Pont. Opt. Max.," or, the " Most Blessed and Supreme." Twenty- 
five other reprints were pubhshed at Paris, Cologne, and Venice — that from 
the last place under the auspices of Pope Gregory XIJI. The printing was 
probably rendered necessary or expedient from the number of agents, or col- 
lectors of those taxes, employed by the Pontiffs ; for beyond Rome, in the 
countries subject to those impositions, it was desirable for mdividuals to know 
what their vices Vv^ould cost them, and how far they could sustain the expense. 
Morna^/, in his Mysttre d'Iniquite, and Claude d'Espence, prov^e that those 
books were publicly and openly exposed to sale. 

But we are told, that those works have been formally and publicly con- 
demned by papal authority in the Indices Prohibitorii. This matter is both a 
hterary and a papal curiosity. Before the year 1564, when the Trent Index 
was compiled and pubhshed, twenty-seven of the editions of the Taxoe had 
appeared, and probably many more, now unknown — and yet no notice what- 
ever was taken of them, in one single instance, until the year 1570 just a 
century after the appearance of the first edition, in an Appendix to the Roman 
Index, published by the authority of the King of Spain. In what terms does 
it there appear? "Praxis et Taxa officinas poenitentiariae Papoe," p. 76 — a 
work, which, if it ever existed under that title, v/as probably never known. 
Vvith apparent misgiving, and possibly with some fear, that it might involve 
what the papacy knew to be its own offspring, the next Index published by 
authority in Rome, that of 1596, by Pope Clement VIII. , adds— "ab haere- 
ticis depravata ; corrupted by heretics." But that specification is a virtual 
admission ihat some copies existed, which were not depraved. 

In his Commentary on the Epistle to Titus, Chap. 1:7; Digressio Secunda, 
on the word di(rKp)K£o6La-^ Claude d'Espence, Rector of the University of Paris, 
having expressly referred to the Centum Gravamina, avers; that all those 
charges might be considered as the fiction of the enemies of the Pope, were 
it not for a book printed, and for some time publicly exposed to sale at Paris, 
entitled Taxa Cameree sen Canceilariee ApostolicEe, in v/hich more wickedness 
may be learne.l than in all the summaries of all vices; and in which are pro- 
posed hcence of sinning to most, and absolution to all who will buy it. He 
wondered, that that infamous and scandalous index of iniquity was not sup- 
prorsed by the friends and rulers of the Roman court; and that the licences 
and impunities for such abominations were renewed in the faculties granted 
to the Papal Legates, of absolving and rendering capable of ecclesiastical 
promotion all sorts, and even the most atrocious, of criminals. He then calls 
upon Rome to blush, and cease any longer to prostitute herself by the publi- 
cation of so infamous a catalogue. 

■ The precedmg detail confirms and illustrates the evidence, by which the 
fact, scarcely credible or conceivable, is substantiated, that a society profess- 
ing itself to'be, not only a church of Jesus Christ, the pure and undefiled 
Saviour of the World, but the only true church, should principally distinguish 
herself — not by her sanctity, not by freedom from sin, not even by moderate 
offences, but by her enormous exactions, by her profligate venahty, by her 
insatiable rapacity, and, above ail, by that craftiness from beneath, which 
■has enabled her, with the most unprincipled dexterity and success, so to ac- 
commodate and subdue religion to every variety anji degree of human vitiosity, 



TAX TABLES. 443 

that the sins of men have been one of the most productive sources of her un- 
fathomable revenue. 

Hence, the reformation of those churches, who withdrew from the slavery 
and corruptions, both in doctrine and discipline, of the Popedom, and asserted 
their own independence, was neither unnecessary nor unjustifiable. Protest- 
ants, therefore, with steadfast and vigorous resolution, and in dependence 
upon divine grace and a favouring Providence, should guard against and resist 
to the utmost every attempt to reinstate that corrupt tyranny in power; 
which, for their heresies, barbarities, blasphemy, and pollution, shameless and 
avowed, almost deserves, in allusion to their owm arrogant assumption, and 
with the variation which truth requires, to be regarded as a congregation of 
malignants — intra " quam nemo salvu^ esse potest ; among whom no man 
can be saved." — Mendham's Taxatio Papalis. 



FEES OF THE POPE'S CHANCERY. 

The following catalogue comprises the most important portion of the 
Romish Tariff for Sins; extracted from Part 4, Section 1, of the Parisian 
edition of 1520. The title page is headed by the arms of the Medici ; Leo X. 
being then Pope ; and those of France. Then follows — " Taxe Cacellarie apos- 
tolice et taxe sacre penitetiare itide aplice." Under a figure of Denis, betw'een 
two angels, holding his own head, is the editor's name, Toussains Denis. 
" Venundantur Pansiis i vico sancti Jacobi per Tossanu Denis bibliopolam 
cum descriptione Italic ac copendio universitatis Parisiensis : et taxis ben'-'fi- 
ciorum ecclesiasticoru Regni Francie, 1520. Cu privilegio i trienia." At the 
end — " Finiut taxatioes aplice impsse Parrhisiis pro Tossano Denis hbrario 
comorante i vico divi .Jacobi i intsignio crucis lignee prope Sacellu Divi 
Ivonis. Anno dni. 1520." 

Quinquennial, and Perpetual Dispensations. 

" duinquennial for one person, or many. — A man and wife, and their chil- 
dren, may be inserted ; 20 gro-s^.— Perpetual, for one person ; 17.— And for a 
man and his v/ife ; 19. 

Absolutions. 

" For liim who forges false testimonials ; 7 gross.— For him who is carnally 
connected with a woman in a church, and commits other evils; 6. — For a 
priest who ^^henedixit^^ blesses a w'oman ready to be married; 7. — For a 
priest who keeps a concubine vv^ith a dispensation; 7. — For a man who com- 
mits incest with his mother, sister, or^ any other female relative; 5. — For 
defiling a virgin ; 6. — For perjury ; 6. For false testimony ; 6. — For a priest 
who reveals the matter of confession ; 7. — For him who forges the Pope's 
letters ; 17 or 18. 

Commutation of Vows. 

"To change or prorogue the vow of visiting Jerusalem, or Rome, or the se- 
pulchre of James, in Cjmpostella; 17. — For him who vowed to become a 
monk; 6 — and, also, to repeat the Lord's prayer twenty times daily, for one 
year. 

Matrimonial Dispensations. 

" For thefourth grade of consanguinity; 17. — For the third and fourth, or 
fourth and fifth, degrees; 27. — For a spiritual relation; 60. — 0= Note dili- 
gently, that dispensations of this kind are not granted to the poor! 

Licence to eat flesh butter, eggs, and white meals, during Lent, and upon 
other fasts ; 7. 

Absolutions. 

" For a layman who kills an abbot, or other priest, monk, or ecclesiastic, 
inferior to a prelate ; 7, 8, or 9.— For one layman who kills another; 5.— Abso- 
lution and dispensation for a homicide, whether layman or priest, who 
supplicates it without condiiion; 13 or 20.— For him who kills his father, 



444 ROMAN 

mother, brother, sister, wife, or any other relative ; 5 or 7. — If the murderer 
be a priest ; 7. — For a man who beats his pregnant wife, so as to produce a 
miscarriage; 6. — For a woman who uses any means to procure an abor- 
tion ; 5 — and if the crime was perpetrated at the instio^ation of a priest or 
monk, he shall also pay for the absolution ; 7. — For laying violent hands 
upon any ecclesiastic, with effiasion of blood ; 8 or 9 : without effusion of 
blood, or pulling off of the hair; 7. — For a woman or monk committing the 
same acts ; 7. 

" Absolution and dispensation for thefts, burnings, rapine, or homicide ; 8.— 
For bigamy ; 10. — For permission to inter an excommunicated person, or the 
murderer of a priest, in the usual burying ground ; 6. — For permission to a nun 
to visit a watering-place, upon the plea of infirmity; 2. — For a monk who 
departs from his monastery without licence; 7, or 8, or 9. 

In the British Museum are two small manuscript volumes, on vellum. 
They were withdrawn from the arcliives of Rome, upon the death of Pope 
Innocent XII., by Aymon the Prothonotary. They contain copies of the 
Taxcc, both CancellaricB and Penitentiaries. One is dated, 6 February, 
1514; the other, 10 March, 1520; " Mandatum Leonis, Papae X. — Mandate 
of Pope Leo X." The following catalogue of prices, or taxes, for crimes, 
is extracted from them. 

" Absolution for a layman, who kills a layman or priest ; 20 ^ross. — Volume 
1350; page 121. — For simony; 102. — For perjury; 202. — For forging the 
Pope's letters; 202.— Page 123. — For a priest who violates a woman at con- 
fession ; 102. — For him who commits incest with his mother; 102. — For a 
priest who is connected with nuns in the convent ; 102. — Page 126. — For the 
rape of a girl or a married woman ; 102. — Page 124. — For him who commits 
incest with his sister or female relative; 102^ — For him who has a child by 
his nurse; 102. — For any unnatural lewdness; 102. — Page 161.— In volume 
1851 ; pagfes 132 and 133 ; are similar taxes for simony ; apostacy ; perjury; 
falsehood; homicides; and numerous most loathsome violations of the se- 
venth commandment. 

It is therefore a tremendously awful fact, that the Papal anti-christian sys- 
tem positively encourages wickedness, not only by the right of sanctuary, 
but also by indulgences ; and men who pretend to be the earthly vicegerents 
of " Jesus the Son of God," teach mankind, that Jehovah has empowered 
them to pardon sin, and that the remission of all iniquity can be procured 
from them for money. 

" At the period of the Reformation, the effrontery which was displayed by 
the agents of the Papal Court, in imposing on the creduhty of mankind by 
the sale of indulgences, had arrived at a most extraordinary height. The 
Christian world swarmed with those enemies to its purity and peace, unfold- 
ing their nefarious wares in every town and village, and actually exposing 
them for sale to the highest bidder. About the time when Tetzel was prose- 
cuting the traffic of indulgences in Germany, another dealer in that spiritual 
merchandise, Bernardino Sampson, an ItaUan Monk, was carrying it on 
with vigour in Switzerland. That man openly prosecuted his trade in the 
inns, churches, and public squares. Some of his bulls, written on common 
paper, he sold for threepence; others, on parchment, for a crown; while 
others were much more expensive. Some of them authorized the purchaser 
to choose his own confessor, who acquired, ipso facto, the power to relieve 
him from any vow, or even to absolve him from perjury. " If any man pur- 
chase letters of indulgence, his soul may rest secure with respect to salvation. 
The souls confined in purgatory, for whose redemption indulgences are pur- 
chased, as soon as the money tinkles in the chest, instantly escape from that 
place of torment, and ascend to heaven. The efficacy of indulgences, indeed, 
IS 80 great, that the most heinous sins are expiated and remitted by them, and 
the person is so freed both from punishment and guilt. For twelve pence you 
may redeem the soul of your father out of purgatory." That audacious mo- 
nastic carried from Switzerland, as his own share of the profits, a sum equal 
to nine millions of dollars, besides a quantity of gold and silver plate. 



TAX BOOKS. 445 

That doctrine directly and positively encouraged the perpetration of crime. 
The fear of future punishment — the dread of that unknown hereafter, in 
which men \\dll be rewarded according to their works — a dread with which 
man in his rudest state is conversant, and which no sophistry can ever en- 
tirely banish away from him — is that powerful restraint, by which, in tho 
management of his righteous government, God has chosen to repress the 
wickedness of mankind. Withdraw that fear from the minds of men — set 
them loose from the apprehension of Heaven's righteous and awful judgment 
in the world to come, and you open the way to the most atrocious impiety. 
That evil was done by the Papal institution. The future judgment was not 
absolutely denied — but, by the assurance, that a paltry sum of money would 
save from the wo, and introduce into the fehcity of the coming world, that 
doctrine was rendered a non-entity. Men might live according to all the in- 
cUnations of their depraved hearts, undismayed by the thought of futurity, 
and certain that, provided they were liberal to the priests, the most dissipated 
life would not exclude them from celestial bhss. 

The rij2:ht of sanctuary also operated as a very powerful incentive to the 
perpetration of crime. Pagan superstition made the temples and altars of 
the gods, and the tombs and statues of heroes, asylums for criminals ; and, 
in imitation of their example, Popery devoted to the same purpose, churches, 
altars, crosses, and cemeteries. If any felon, however atrocious, betook him- 
self to consecrated s^round, his life was safe. Justice w^as set at defiance, the 
laws were trampled on, the civil power was despised, and clerical insolence 
screened from punishment the most aggravated crimes. " To those places, 
rich men run with poor men's goods; there men's wives carried their hus- 
bands' property ; and thieves lived on their stolen wealth. There they devised 
new robberies; nightly they plundered, and killed, and re-entered; as though 
the asylums gave them not only a safeguard for the villany they had done, 
but a licence to do more." 

Although that institution was the source of a multitude of evils — although 
it was utterly hostile to any thing lilie national order and moraUty, it was 
guarded by the Roman Court — their power was exerted on its behalf— and 
the secular authorities, even in the most glaring case, dared not to interfere. 

Those baleful institutions, which operated so fearfully to encourage immo- 
rahty, indulgences, and sanctuaries for crime ; have been swept away by the 
Reformation, with a thousand other abominations of Popery. The know- 
ledge of right and wrong does not now depend on the pleasure of a weak 
and worthless mortal. The disgrace and the danger of crime have been set 
in their proper light — and the laws of God and the State have been vindicated 
from violation, and guarded and supported by reason and religion. Nor are 
those benefits of the Reformation altogether confined to Protestant lands ; 
they have been experienced also in Popish countries. It is true, the doctrine 
of indulgences has never been relinquished by the Papal See ; but has been 
declared' perpetual by the authority of their last general Council of Trent; 
and is even now acknowledged by the Roman Court, as one of her un- 
changing laws, and the twin doctrine of the right of sanctuary is still recog- 
nized by them. So little are its revolting abominations at variance with the 
spirit even of modern Popery, which some would have us believe to be a very 
different thing from the ancient system — that a few years only have elapsed, 
since the Pope appointed four towns in Italy, to be asylums for assassins ! 
Nevertheless, Popish countries have shared, in no small -degree, in the good 
which the Reformation has conferred on mankind, by the abolition of those 
institutions. The flagrant abuses with which they polluted society, by the 
light of the recovered Word of God, have been exhibited in all their deformity, 
and since that time have been more rarely witnessed. Another Tetzel has 
not disgraced an age since that of Luther ; nor would even Popish princes 
permit such violent encroachment on their laws, as they were accustomed to 
Vv^tness with degrading tameness, in the days of darkness and superstition." 
— Mackray. 

38 



JESUITISM; 

DELINEATED 

BY THE 

PARLIAMENT OF PARIS; 

CONTAINING 

EXTRACTS FROM THE 

MOST RENOWNED JESUIT AUTHORS. 



When the crimes and misery which inundated Europe through the pre- 
dominance of Popery and Jesuitism could no longer be borne, the French 
Government, in the year 1761, determined to banish the Jesuits from their 
kingdom. By several decrees of the Parliament of Paris it was enacted, that 
the books w^hich had been published by the Jesuits should be examined, and 
attested by Commissioners appointed by that Parliament, that by their per- 
nicious volumes, the abolition of the Order might be justified. In conformity 
with those "Arrets," a quarto volume in Latin and French was pubhshed, 
which is thus entitled : " Extraits des Assertions dangereuses at pernicieuses 
en tout genre, que les soi-disant Jesuites ont, dans tons les temps et persever- , 
am men t, soutenues, enseignees et publiees dans leurs Livres, avec 1' approba- 
tion de leurs Superieures et Generaux. Verifies et collationees par les Com- 
missaires du Parlement, en execution de I'arrete de la Cour du 31 Aout, 1761, 
et Arret du 3 Septembre suivant, sur les Livres, Theses, Cahiers composes, 
dictt s et publiees par les soi-disant Jesuites, et autres actes authentiques ; 
Deposes, au Greffe de la Cour par Arrets des 3 Septembre, 1761 ; 5, 17, 18, 
26 Fevrier ; et 5 Mars, 1762. A Paris ; chez Pierre Guillaume Simon, 
Imprimeur du Parlement, rue de la Hai-pe, a I'Hercule, 1762." 

The parham.entary decree of the fifth of March, 1762, directed the pubhcation 
and the transmission of copies of the work to all the principal Ecclesiastics in 
the kingdom. Having specified the prior acts for examining the authorized 
books of the Jesuits, the decree thus proceeds. 

" The subject having been duly investigated and discussed ; the Parlia- 
ment, all the chambers being assembled, have decreed and ordained, that the 
aforesaid extracts, verified and collated by the Commissioners, and the 
Translation of them, shall be annexed to the 'proces verbal' of this day; 
and that the Attorney General shall be directed to send without delay the 
said ^Assertions' to all the Prelates, that they may adopt all necessary 
measures upon this important affair. The parliament also enjoin upon their 



JESUITISM. 417 

President to present to the King a faithful copy of the said passages ; that the 
King may know the mischievous doctrines which are maintained without 
interruption by the priests, students, and other members of the order of Jesuits ; 
in a multitude of works often printed, in public theses, and in lectures dictated 
to youth from the first organization of that society until this time, with the 
approbation of their Theologians, the permission of their superiors and gen 
erals, and the eulogy of the other members of the said order — doctrines which^ 
in their consequences^ destroy the law of Nature^ that rule of morals which God 
himself has inscribed upon the heart of man. Their dogmas also break all the 
bonds of civil society : by authorizing theft, falsehood, perjury, the most inor- 
dinate and criminal impurity, and generally all passions and wickedness ; 
by teaching the nefarious principles of secret compensation, equivocation, men- 
tal reservation, Probabilism, and philosophical sins ; by extirpating every 
sentiment of humanity among mankind, in their sanction of homicide and 
parricide; by subverting the authority of governments, and the principles of 
subordination and obedience ; by inculcating regicide among faithful subjects ; 
— and, in fine, by subverting the foundations and practice of Religion, and 
substituting all sorts of superstitions, with magic, blasphemy, irreligion, and 
idolatry. The King is also requested to consider the dreadful results of those 
pernicious instructions, especially when combined with the other abominations 
which the rules and constitutions of the said Jesuits prescribe, respecting the 
choice and entire uniformity of sentiments and opinions throughout the said 
society." The order is then repeated, that the parUamentary decree and at- 
tested copies of the Extracts from the works of the Jesuits shall promptly be 
transmitted to the Prelates. " Done in Parliament, all the chambers being 
assembled, 5 March, 1762." To which are appended the official signatures ; 
'"Regnault, and Dufranc." 

The volume is divided into eighteen chapters ; and contains extracts from 
one hundred and fi-fty different authors; whose writings were successively 
issued from the year 1590 to 1761 ; including nearly the whole period, one hun 
dred and seventy-one years, from their permanent and extended operations, 
until they became so atrociously vile and odious, that even the priest-driven 
vassals in the dominions of the Beast no longer could tolerate their diabolical 
machinations. The chapters are disposed according to the ensuing "Table 
of the title of the Propositions recited in this collection." 

I. Unity of sentiments and doctrine of those who are called the Society of 
Jesuits. Upon which topic there are extracts from five authors and eight 
different works from the year 1640 to 1757. The last volume is entitled, "in- 
stitutes of the Society of Jesus. By authority of the general Congregation." 
They inculcate these three general rules — That the spirit and character of 
Jesuitism are to be ascertained by the ordinances and rules composed by the 
Superiors and most influential members; that nO book can be published by 
any Jesuit upon his own private responsibility, for it must be sanctioned prior 
to its promulgation by the generals of the order as a true exposition of the 
avowed principles of all the members; and that they are but " one in design, 
action, and vows, as if they were united by the conjugal bond. At the least 
signal, one man turns and changes the whole Society, and determines the 
vv^hole body, who are easily impelled, but with difficulty counteracted." — 
Imago prim i Seci.di,&c. Prolog. 33, Lib. 5. 622. 



448 , JESUITIS5I. 

II. Prohahilism. To illustrate this peculiar attribute of Jesuitism, f-fly- 
five writers from the year 1600 to 1759, are cited, containing about three hun- 
dred passages, of which one only from page 51, is selected, as a specimen of 
that perfect adaptation of Jesuitical prmciples to the depraved propensities of 
sinners. "The Confessor whether ordinary or delegated, under the penalty 
of m.ortal sin, is bound to absolve the penitent, who follows the probable 
opinion of sin, even when the Confessor himself knows that it is false." — 
Georges de Rhodes, Actes humains ; Disput. 2. Q,uest. 2. Sect. 3. 

III. Philosophical Sin — Invincible Ignorance — Erroneous Conscience, d^c. 
Forty authors are quoted as expositors of those dogmas of Jesuitism, from 
the year 1607 to 1761 : including one hundred and thirty paragraphs. 

IV. Simony and Secrecy. To this chapter are appended the works of 
fourteen v.Titers, from the year 1590 to 1759 ; and forty-one extract? from 
their productions. 

V. Blasphemy. Five of the Jesuit Commentators are adduced from the 
year 1640 to 1756 : and fourteen illustrations. 

VI. Sacrilege, This subject is elucidated by four passages from Francis 
de Lugo, of the year 1652; and three citations from Georges Gobat, 1700. 

VII. Magic. *To unfold that part of the " mystery of iniquity," are al- 
leged, Escobar, of the year 1663 ; Taberna, 1736; Arsdekin, 1744 ; Laymann, 
174S, and Trachala, 1759; and thirteen paragraphs from their works. 

VIJI. Astrology. Arsdekin, 1744 ; and Busembaum and La Croix are 
cited, as sanctionmg that impious \dolation of the divine law. 

IX. Irreligion. Thirty-seven v/riters from the year 1607 to 1759 are 
successively adduced, and one hundred and thirty extracts from their vol- 
umes. We select one specimen: "By the command of God, it is lawful to 
murder the innocent, to rob, and to commit all lewdness ; and thus to fulfil 
his mandate is our duty." — Alagona Sum. Theolog. Compend. Thorn. 
AquinaF, Quest. 94. 

X. Idolatry. This topic is subdivided into three parts. The general sanc- 
tion to idolatry which is given by the order of Jesuits is proved by three 
extracts from Vasquez, of the year 1614 ; and by a quotation from Fagundez, 
1640. The approbation which the Jesuits formally gave to the Chinese idola- 
trous ceremonies is verified by nineteen extracts from the Papal Bulls, and 
various w^orks of those Priest's from the year 1645 to 1742. — That they en- 
couraged and participated in the idolatry of the Malabars is demonstrated 
by ten extracts from Papal Bulls, Decrees, &.c. from the year 1645 to 1745. 
Those mandates from the Roman Court particularly interdicted the Jesuits 
from their open combination with those Idolaters ; upon which Daniel^ in 
his Recueil de divers ouvrages philoso} hiques, theologiques, &c. ; Paris, 
1724 ; thus decides. " That article concerning idolatry, of all the Provincial 
affair?, is the most cruel towards the Jesuits. " I have often told them that it 
is a decisive point for all others -•> for any thing once having been supposed 
to be true, all which follows from it is credible, or at least appears not to be 
incredible." — Entretien de Cleand. et d'End. 440. — According to which pro- 
position, error or wickedness cannot possibly exist in the world. 

XL Licentiousness. This topic is illustrated by eighteen writers of the 
very highest authority in the order, from the year 1590 to 1759 ; with fifty-one 
c'tations from their works. That entire chapter is incorporated at the end 
of this summary. 

XII. Perjury, L/i/ing, and False Witnesses. Twenty-nine authors, from 
the year 1590 to 1761, illustrate those subjects; and one hundred and fifty-three 
paragraphs are extracted from their books. 

XIII. Prevarication of Judges. Laymann of the year 1647 ; Fabri, 1670; 
Taberna, 1736; Fegeli, 1750; and Busembaum and La Croix, 1757; in eight 
paraofi-aphs, instmct Judges how to pervert law and justice. 

XIV. Theft ; Secret Compensation ; Concealment, d^c. To develop how 
men may steal and plunder with impunity, and without sin ; by every variety 
of artifice ; thirty-four writers from the year 1590 to 1761 are introduced ; 
with one hundred and forty-nine expositions of Jesuitical knavery. 



JESUITISM. 449 

XV. Murder. Thirty-six authors, from the year 1590 to 1761. teach the 
various modes of violating the sixth commandment, in one hundred and 
feixty-one passages from their volumes. 

XVI. Parricide, Dicastille of the year 1641 ; Escobar, 1663 ; Gobat, 1700 ; 
Casnedi, 1719 ; and Stoz, 1756, in twenty-nine paragraphs, inculcate and 
justify the murder of parents and other relatives. 

XVII. Suicide. Laymann of the year 1627; and Busembaum and La 
Croix, 1757 ; in fifteen passages defend suicide. ' 

XVIIL High Treason^ and Regicide. Seventy-five of the most renowned 
Jesuit authors from the year 1590 to 1759 ; English, French, German, Spanish, 
and Italian, all are cited; with two hundred and twenty-one quotations from 
their vmtings, which maintain that "Roman Priests are not subject to any 
civil governments ;" Nicolas Muskza, Leg. Hum. Lib. 1. Dissert. 4. Num. 
185 ; — and which defend rebellion, treason, and the murder of all Protestant 
Rulers and Magistrates. 

One of the dogmas must be quoted as a specimen of the morals of Jesuits. 
It was the thesis of Francois Xavier Mamaki, Prefect of the Jesuit College' 
at Rouen in France, in 1759. " Heroas faciunt, &c. Fortunate crimes some- 
times make heroes. Successful crime ceases to be a crime. Whom France 
calls by the opprobrious name of a robber and pirate, she will call 'Alexander,' 
if his course be prosperous. Success constitutes or absolves the guilty at 
its will." 

The work is closed with a quotation from Fegeh of the year 1750, com- 
prising this question. " Howjmay a Confessor acquire the knowledge which 
is essential to himT' Mun. Confess. Pars 1. Cap. 3. Quest. 8. Num. 34. 
The answer is in these words : ' He must learn concerning all difficult mat- 
ters, by studying Casuists upon Cases of Conscience ; especially Laymann's 
Moral Theology, Busembaum's Medulla, which has passed through Jifti/ 
editions, as enlarged by La Croix; Illsung's Practical Theology; and the 
works of Tambourin." That decision is equivalent to an autheniic ratifica- 
tion of all the multifarious volumes which have ever been promulged by the 
Jesuits, from the primary establishment of the Order, until "the Lord shall 
consume that wicked with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy him with 
the brightness of his coming." II. Thessalonians, ii. 8. 



LICENTIOUSNESS. 

The eleventh chapter of the volume published by the Parliament of Paris ; 
entitled ; " Extracts of the dangerous and peenicious propositions 

TAUGHT and MAINTAINED BY THE JeSUITS." 

1. Sa ; 1590. — Potest et femina quoeque, et mas, pro turpi corporis usu 
pretium accipere et petere ; et qui promisit, tenetur solvere. — Anhor. Luxuria, 
249. 

Copulari ante benedictionem aut nullum, aut leve peccatum est ; quin etisni 
expedit, si multumilla differatur. — Aphor. Debitum Conjugale, SO. 

2. Cornelius a Lapide ; 1622. — In haec verba Susannae apud Danieleni, 
Cap. 13 : 22. " Si enim hoc egero, mors mihi est." In hasc vi et metu infa- 
m\2d mortisque, poterat Susanna dicere ; non consentio actui, sed patiar et 
tacebo, lie me infametis et adigatis ad mortem, uti dicam, 23. Quanquam 
forte Susanna id vel non sciebat, vel non cogitabat. Sic enim honestae cas- 
tseque Virgines putant se esse reas, seque consensisse lenonibus, si non cla- 
more, manibus totisque viribus eis reluctentur et resistant. — Peccasset Su- 
sanna consentiendo et cooperando, puta commiscendo se senibus quod ipsi 
petebant, 20. Potuisset tamen in tan to periculo infamiae et mortis negative 
se habere, ac permittere in se eorum libidinem, modo interne actu in earn 
non consensispet, sed earn dctestata et execrata fuisset, quia majus bonuru 
est fama et vita, quam pudicitia : unde banc pro ilia exponere licet. Itnquc 
non tenebatur iosa exclamare— Quod ergo exclamarit, nulloque modo coram 

38* 



450 JESTTITISM. 

libidinem in se permisent, actus fruit insignis et heroicae castitatis. — Comment, 
in Prophet. Major. In Danielem, Cap. 13 : 22, 23. History of Susanna in 
the Apocrypha. 

3. Jh erdinandus de Castro Palao ; 1631. — Si ministratio sit in re de se 
mala et turpi — ut si conciibinam quseras, illamque invites ad copulam domini ; 
si dominum in rixa adjuves, qua intendit occidere inimicum, simul cum illo 
pugiiando, &c. haec-^intrinsece mala sunt. Quare difficultas est, quando 
ministratio est rerum indifFerentium de se, et abest prava intentio. 

Distinouendum censeo— de actionibus nimis indifferentibus bono et male 
Usui, et de actionibus, etsi indifferentibus, proxime tamen malo usui de servi- 
entibns.— Si ministres in differentia, quse reputantur remota actioni pravse, 
ratio famulatus, fihationis. &c., sufficit te excusare. Indifferentia nimis re- 
moia voco, cibos condere, mensae ministrare, lectum concubinae sternere, 
iilam ornare, equum quo usura est praeparare, januam domus ilh aperire, 
deferre munuscula, internuncia, urbanitates, et aha simiha. Haec enim omnia 
non \identur ita proxime peccato accedere, quin honestari possint ex subjec- 
tione debita domino et parenti. Et ita tradit, Azor. Tom. 2. Instit. Moral. 
Lib. 12. Cap. Ult. Q,uest 8. — Sa^ Verb. Peccatum Num. 9. — Sanchez alios 
referens, Lib. 1, in Decal. Cap. 7. Num. 24, 27, 29, 30. 

Si indifferentia proximiora peccato subministres, aliam causam graviorem 
honestandi administrationem expostulo, quahs esset : si pater torvis ocuhs te 
aspiceret, et timeres male tractari; vel si dominus a domo sua te expelleret. 
et expulsus cogereris m.endicare, vel penuriam pati, praecipue cum non ita 
facile alium dominum invenias, qui similia vel pejora ministeria non petat ; 
vel, si in ejus domo te sustinet, id fit te objurgando et increpando, vel debita 
mercede defraudendo. Si enim ahquod ex his damnis tibi provenit, eo quod 
non ministres actiones jndifferentes de se et pravo usui ex malitia domini 
deservientes, poteris ilia miniscvare; quia tunc non censeris peccato illius 
cooperari, sed potius permiltere. Unde licet tibi tahurgenti occasione presso, 
concubinam portare, signare locum domino, ubi sit. Item, dicere concubinae; 
dominus mens dicit, ut ilium hac nocte expectes vel eum videas. Item, 
domino ascendere volenti per fenestram ad rem habendam cum femina, poteris 
pedem sustinere, scalam apponere, quia sunt actiones de se indifferentes. 

Quod si dominus hbidinem aggressurus, petat ut ilium comiteris et custo- 
das; existimat Sanchez illo. Cap. 7. Num. 23, esse omnino illicitum, si cus- 
todias, et comitatus dirigatur ut invadat ahos concubinaB competitores, cum 
iUisque pugnaturus : hoc enim de se constat esse intrinsece malum. At si 
solum ut custodias herum, si forte aliquis ilium damnificare intendit, vel 
moneas ut anfugiat cum adest qui ilium offendere possit, censet aliquando 
tibi licere, quia est quid indifferens talis custodia. At quia maximo te periculo 
exponis, non solum dominum defendendi, sed etiam excedendi modum defen- 
sionis ; et ex alia parte, tali securitate posita, dominus majori libidine peccat, 
quam si timoribus agitaretur ; ideo maxima causa tibi necessaria est. Non 
explicat autem Sanchez quae haec sit. Existimarem tamen debere esse, si 
timeres, non obediendo, gravem jacturam in bonis fortunae, honoris vel cor- 
poris : levior enim causa non videtur sufficiens. — Oper. Moral. Pars 1. De 
Charitat. Tract. 6. Disput. 6. Punct. 11. Num. 1. 

4. Gaspar Hurtado ; 1633. — Penitenti qui continuo est in occasione proxima 
peccandi mortaliter ; ut in concubinatiu, quia tunc credi potest non esse 
sufficienter dispositum, non est conferenda absolutio, nisi firmiter proponat 
occasionem illam desert urum ; et si post tale propositum aliquoties reincidat, 
non est absolvendus, nisi cum effectu occasionem illam desernerit, nisi grave 
ahquod incommodum aliud facere cogat. Ut contingit, quando femina habi- 
tans in ea domo in qua ab aliquo ex domesticis sollicitatur, et cum eo saepc 
peccat, et nequit inde exire absque gravissimo incommodo, quia in hoc casu 
non est cogenda exire ; ei tamen injungenda sunt media quae ipsam possint a 
peccato avertere.— Disput. 10. Penit. Diffic. Num. 23. 

Primo est difficultas, an actus conjugahs ante benedictiones nuptiales sit 
ilUcitus? — Sancius Navarrus, docent non esse illicitum, et merito; quia 
qtramvis Trident, Sess. 24, de Matrimonio, Cap. 1. suadest at hortetur ne 



JESUITISM. 451 

habeatur ante dictas benedictiones, nullibi tamen prohibetur. — Disput. 10. 
Matrimon. Diffic. Quest. 3. Num. 8. 

5. Jacobus Gordonus ; 1634. — Facile est definire, an meretrix licite retineat 
prostitutionis suae pretium. Potest qudem moderatum pretium retinere. 
Jam vero de fornicaiia occulta, de conjugata ac virgin e, idem quoad restitutioneni 
esse dicendum, evincit ratio eadem ; sed hoc speciale est in conjugata, quod 
debeat iilud acceptum pretium numerare inter communia bona, constante 
matrimonio quassita, ad quas scilicet bona suum jus habet maritns, ut dixi, 
bluest. 3. Num. 10. Cseterum in his omnibus sicut abesse fraudem necesse 
est, ita pono dantem habere solidum rei dataB dominium. — Lib. 5. Quest. 5. 
Cap. 6. Num. 3. 

6. Joannes De Dlscastillo ; 1641. — QuEeres, an puella, quae per vim op- 
primitur, teneatur clamare, et opem implorare ne violetur 1 

Cajetan, Quest. 154. Art. 4. putat teneri, non obstante infamia, quas inde 
sequi posset. Sotus vero et Navarrus contrarium docent ; idemque significat 
Sa. Cum Cajetano ego sentio, si non sit notabilis infamia, et possit clamoribus 
se tueri. Si enim notabilis infamia, mors, aut nimia verecundia sequatur, non 
videtur cum tanto suo incommodo teneri impedire peccatum alterius. Ita 
Reginaldus, Navarrus, et Sa; qui quando resistendum docet, limitat, ut sit 
sine periculo vitas, aut famae. Et quidem sicut non tenetur cum morte in- 
vasoris et opprimentis, ut dicemus loco citato de justitia; ita etiam non tene- 
tur eandem pudicitiam tueri cum tanto suo incommodo. 

Non est tamen improbabiiis sententia Cajetani, turn * propter exemplum 
Susannae, quae, qiiamvis videret mortem sibi impendere et infamiam, adhuc 
clamare voliiit : turn quia videretur aliquis consensus, et voluntarium mixtum 
in copula m ; qui consensus peccatum est. Hae tamen rationes non convin- 
cunt. Prima, vel quia Susannae exemplum solum fuit insignis pudicitia et 
castimonia, ibiquc fecit ultra quam absolute obligabatur. Praeterea illi non 
hiferehaiur adliuc vis absoluta ; sed solum injiciebantur mortis et infamiae, 
timores, quibus consensum iniqui senes extorquere nitebantur. 

Secunda ratio non probat adesse consensum, sed solum permissionem, dum 
corpovi vis absoluta infertur ; quae non potest removeri, nisi cum mortis vel 
infamiae periculo. Suppono enim feminam nullum praebere consensum, nee 
ahquid ratione cooperari ad turpem consjressum ; sed mere passive se habere. 
Justit. et.Tur. Cetcr. Virtut. Cardinal. De Temperant. Lib. 1, Disput. 3. Dub. 
17. Num. 276, 277, 278, 279. 

7. Antonius Escobar ; 1652. — Opera in ebrietate contingentia, etiam ante 
ebrietatem praivisa, non sunt peccata. 

De foniicatione, nece, aut vulnere praeviso, quaesierim an hujusmodi opera 
hi ebrietate contingentia sunt peccata? Non sunt peccata, nee denomina- 
tione extrinseca a malitia causas ; sed sunt quidam peccati praecedentis efFec- 
tus. 

Profecto, qui ante ebrietatem proevidet— peccat, eique crimen illud imputa- 
tur. Attamen actus ipse post ebrietatem nulla malitia morali informatur, et 
per consequens non est peccatum, sed peccati precedentis efFectus. — Primae 
sententiae etsi hacreas, existimo, si te, post haustum merum e quo sis ebrian- 
dus, antequam peccatum sen actiones externae illae subsequantur, datae cau- 
sae peniteatj tunc actiones ill as culpa vacare ; et per consequens non esse 
vocanda formaliter et in se peccata, quia per penitentiam causa eorum fuit 
intercisa, et ideo sunt postea involuntaria : didici a Beccano. Tract. 2. Cap. 3- 
— Theolog. Moral. Vitiis Cap. Lib. 4. Sect. 2. Prob. 18. Num. 238, 239, 240. 

Clericus rem habens cum femina in vase prepostero non incurrit paenas 
Bullae Pii V. — Existimo banc sententiam non solum probabilem, sed pre- 
ponendam.— Theolog. Moral. Precept. Lib. 33. Sect. 2. Prob. 39. Num. 222. 

Clericus sodomitice patiens non incidit in paenas Bullae. Hanc sententiam 
crediderim esse veram. — Prob. 40. Num. 225. 

Clericus crimen sodomiticum, semel, bis aut ter perpetrans non incurrit 
praefatae Bullae paenas. Quia in Bulla ilia Pontifex paenas infligit Clericis sodo- 
miam exercentibus ; at in jure intelligtmtur hi qui aliquid frequenti usu efficiunt 
Ita Azor. Putarim non sufficere unicum lapsum, nee si bis aut ter quis lalo 



452 JESUITISM. 

crimen comniiserit, ut Ballas 'pcenis siibjiciatur. Nee valet, minime in Laicis 
hujusce criminis frequentiam desiderari, ut capital! pcense sint obnoxii. Laicus 
enim Princops voluit siibjici pcense hiijus crimiiiis patratorem : Pontifcx vero 
exercitatorem suae poenas Clericum subjici decrevit, minime patratorem. — 
Prob. 41. Num. 227, 228. ^ ^ 

Clericus vitium bestialitatis perpetrans non incurrit Builse Pii V. pcenas. 
Veriorem banc puto esse sententiam. — Prob. 44. Num. 237. 

Ut incurrantur poenee Juris Canonici ei Tridentini contra Raptores femina- 
rum, necesse est, ut fiat raptus causa matrimonii ; non sufficit fieri cansa libi- 
dinis. Concilii po^nse solum intelliguntur de raptu cansa ineundi matrmionii 
facto, non causa libidinis. Nam decretum hoc poenale Concilii ponitur in 
rubrica, et sub titulo de reformatione matrimonii; solum ergo loquitur de 
raptu causa iilius ineundi facto, non causa libidinis. — Num. 252. 253. 

Masculus, causa libidinis, Masculum. rapiens non est ordinarise legis poenas 
obnoxius. Obnoxius non est raptor Masculi capitali legis poense. — Certe im- 
perator loquitur expresse de feminarum non virorum raptu ; et si voluisset in 
ea Masculorum rcptum comprebendere, eos equidem nominassen Unde 
magis mihi sententia haec placet. — Prob. 51. Num. 258, 259. 

8- Simon de Lessau; 1655. — Mortaliter non peccant mulieres, quae se prsbent 
conspiciendas adolescentibus, a quibus se credunt turpiter concupiscendas, si 
hoc faciant ahqua necessitate, aut utilitate, aut ne se privent sua libertate, vel 
jure exeundi domo. vel standi ad ostium, vel fenestram dcuras. — Propositions 
dictees dans le Goilege des Jesuites d'Amiens. 

9. Thovias Tamburinus ; 1659. — Quantum pro us-m corporis juf?fe exigat 
miilier ?-~Ad questiones, quce hujus pretii taxam inquirebaiUj coinmunift respon- 
sio est, spectatis omnibus, persons nobihtate, pulchritudiT:ie, a:tati>,, honestHte, 
&c. esee id decernendum ; plus enim meretur honesta, et nomini pervia, quam 
• omnibus obvia, &c. Yerum ad banc responsionem, animus qui e.xplicatiua 
aliquid, et magis determinatum desiderat, non omnino acqidescit. — Explic. 
Decalog. Lib. 7. Cap. 5. Sect. 3. Num. 23. 

Distinguunt nonnulli. Enim sermo est de meretrice, vel de femina lionesta. 
Meretrix, ait Lugo de Just. Dis 18. Sect. 3. Num. 47, non potest jure petere, 
ve-l accipere, nisi quantum plus minus solet ipsa eadem a ceteris conquirere ; 
haec enim est cmptio et venditio inter illam et Amasium. Hie dat pretium, 
ilia usum corporis. Cum igitur conditio emptionis et venditionis justas requirat ; 
ut pretium sit iliud quo communiter res venditur, ita ent et hie. duare si 
meretrix dolo fingens s> esse honestam, cum tamen talis in communi opinione 
non sit ; vel fingens ab aliis multum accipere, plus notabiliter accipial, obli- 
gabitur excessum restituere } nisi forte ex circumstantiis coUigat esse lihera- 
lem donationem Amasii, quam ego tunc adesse prscsumerem, quandois sponte 
et non exactus a meretrice, tantam vel tantam mercedem porrigeret.— Explic. 
Decalog. Lib. 7. Cap. 5. Sect. 3. Num. 24. 

At vero femina honesta potest petere et sumere quantum ei placet. Ratio 
est, quia in his et similibus rebus, qus pretio statuto vel vulgari carent, tanti 
res potest vendi, quanti cam destimat qui vendit ; at puella honesta plurimi 
potest suam honestatem sstimare. Unde vides, meretricem potuisse initio 
sua3 prostitutionis plus accipere : at ubi tanto vel tanto pretio honestatem suam 
ffisiimavit, huic sstimationi debet stare; secus venderet suam aestimationem. 
Lugo. — Fateor banc distinctionem esse probabilem; sed quoniam non impro- 
babihs est sententia, ex Valence, Toilet, Sa, dicens in rebus quae non sunt vic- 
tui ac ves itui, et his similibus necessarice, quemlibct posse rem suam vendere, 
quanti sine fraude potest. Sic enim conceditur Falconem, canem venaticum, 
gemmam tanti vendere, quanti quis potest ; quia hsec sunt ad delicias, non 
ad necessitatem. Cur etiam id not sit sentiendum de meretrice, quae usum 
actualem sui corporis velit, huic vilius, huic carius, ut ei libet, sine dolo vendere 7 
Addidi, sine dolo, nam si mendaciisutatur et fallaciis, non ilia solum meretrix, 
verum etiam quaecumque alias honesta, simiilibus utens paris erit injustitise rea. 
—Explic. Decalo.of. Lib. 7. Cap. 5. Sect. 3. Num. 25. 

^ 10. Jacobus Tirinus ; 1668. — ^Verum angustias omnes efiugisset Susanna, 
si viet raetu infaniiae, imo mortis, compuisa permisisset adultana '^uain ^xplere 



JEStJITISM. 453 

libidinem, non consentiendo vel cooperando, sed permittendo, et negative se 
habendo. Neque eiiim tenebatur ad conservandam castitamen, clamando 
sese diffamare, et in mortis periculum conjicere ; cum integritas corporis 
minus bonum sit quam fama vei vita. — Comment, in Dan. Cap. 13 : 22. 

11. Georgius Gobatus ; 1700. — Licet autem Sanchez absolute scribat, ilium 
qui suae concubinae dedit rnutuos centum aureos, quos, si eam dimittat, non 
sit recuperatus, baud teneri earn dimittere, esto versetur in proximo periculo 
relabendi in peccatum cum ilia, si non dimittat. Attamen Palaus absolute 
rejicit eam resolutionem, casu quo din durabit ille cohabitatio cum gravi ten- 
taiione ; et Oviedus loquens de illo qui timet se saepe consummaturum pecca- 
tum cum concubina, admittit eam doctrinam solum respectu hominis qui 
habet tantum necessaria ad parce vivendnm, non autem respectu mediocriter 
divitis.— Oper. Moral. Tom. 1. Tract. 7. Cas. 16. Num. 530. 

Si concubinus nequeat dimittere suam concubinam sine jactura centum 
aureorum seu ducatorum, poterit Confessarius pro re nata amplecti senten- 
tiam vel Sanchez, vel Oviedi. — Oper. Moral. Tom. 1. Tract. 7. Cas 16. Num. 
532. 

12. Charli; 1722. — Sunt varia legis naturae praecepta ita obscura, ut vix 
possint a viris fidelibus et doctis percipi, tale est praeceptum prohibens simpli- 
cem fornicationem cum adhibita prudenti cautione pro honesta educatione 
prolis si nascatur. Idem die — de pollutione, praDsertim quando est necessaria 
ad sanitatem, vel etiam ad vitam conversandam, ac de similibus aliis quae 
communi Doctorum consensu jure naturae prohibita sunt. — Quid autem mirum 
quod Infideles toto vitae suae tempore invincibiliter ignorent malitiam hujus- 
modi actionum, cum vix a Fidelibus etiam ingeniosis et doctis deprehendi 
possit, stando in solo Jure naturali. — Propositions dictees au College de 
Rhodez. Prop. 12. Quest. 3. Art. 2. Sec. 3. Cap. 2. Conclus. 3. 

" It is evident that Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Thomas, were persuaded not 
only that men might have an invincible ignorance with regard to fornication, 
self-pollution, &c, but that they might even be meritorious in following that 
erroneous conscience." — Proposition 13. 

13. Joannes Baptlsta Taberna ; 1736. — An et quae violentia causet in- 
voluntarium? — Violentia absoluta et efficax, cui resisti non possit, causat in- 
voluntarium. Cui resisti non possit, quia nuda displicentia non sufficit ad 
causandum involuntarium simpliciter et excusanduni a peccato. Hinc si 
puellae vis inferatur, et ipsi quidem displiceat fornicatio, non tamen aggressor! 
resistat efficaciter ex parte sua, seu quantum hie et nunc morahter potest et 
debet, fornicatio censebitur illi voluntaria, saltern interpretative, et peccabit 
graviter. Si tamen ob evidens periculum gravissimi inah, mortis aut iugentis 
infamiae, non adhibeat omnia omnino media qus potest, ad vim propulsan- 
dam fornicatio non imputabiturilh ad peccatum, secluso consensu in illam : 
quia efiectus consequens omissionem non est voluntarius, nee imputatur ad 
culpam, nisi adsit obligatio ponendi ea media quibus effectus ille impediatur; 
quae in casu nostro non reperitur. Ceterum in praxi propter periculum con- 
sensus in delectationem veneream, plane suadendum, ut puella omni modo 
physico quo potest, aggress?ri resistat, etiam contempta morte aut infamia. — 
Synopsis Theologiae practicae. Pars 1. Cap, 3. Sect. 1. 

14. Thomas Sanchez ; 1739. — Utrum censeatur Matrimonium consumma- 
tum, si solus vir intra vas naturale feminae seminet 7 Communis sententia 
affirmat censeri consummatum ; eaque innititur fundamento, quod semen 
foemineum ad ffenerationem necessarium non sit. — Sanct. Matrimon. Sacram. 
Disput. Tom. 1. Lib. 2. Disput. 21. Quest. 2. Nurn. 10. 

Quamvis haec sen'entia communior et probabilior sit, non tamen est adeo 
certa, ut quid am ex ejus defensoribus existimant ; cum innitatur illi soh prin- 
cipio philosophico, quod semen foBmineum non sit necessarium ad genera- 
tionem ; et illud non est certum, quia satis probabiliter multi tenent contra- 
rium. Cum ergfo fundaraentum non sit certum, ita nee opinio illi innitens. 
Quod adeo probabiie est, ut Suarez fateatur cum aliis, esse probabile adfuisso 
semeti in Virgine, absque omni prorsus inordinatione, ut ministraret concep- 
tioni Christi materiam, ut sic esset vera et naturalis Mater Dei. Quod idem 



454 JESUITISM. 

defendit Pero Maro Tract, de Sem. ubi quid naturale et qnid miraculosiim 

fuerit in Christi conceptione; Sect. An vero Maria Virgo 1 — et probat absque 
onini inordinatione et concupisceiifia decidi posse semen — Triplex in hac dis- 
putatione involvitur questio; quando vas innaturale usurpatur; quando sem- 
inatio utriiisque conjugis non est simuitanea, vel data opera, est extra vas 
legilimum ; quando est extra ratione impotentise. — Tom. 1. Lib. 2. Disput. 21. 
G'lieit. 2 Num. 11.— Tom. 3. Lib. 9. Disput. 17. Num. 1. 

An semper sit culpa lethalis, ubi, vase naturali omisso, innaturali conjuges 
abutuntur'? Quidem ubi in vase innaturali copula consummatur, aut est 
animus consummandi, manifeste est sodomia lethalis, peccatuinque contra 
naturam. Quia adversatur fmi naturali iilius copuis, qui est prolis generatio. 
Nee uxor ad siniilem copulam, sed ad soiani copulam intra vas legitimum, 
uxor est. — Disput. 17. Nmu. 2. 

Aliqui tamen id admittunt, ut refert Abulensis — ^ut verum sit in viro agenti, 
secus in femina patienti. Quia non habet sui corporis potestatem, sed solus 
vir. Deinde quia stat, petentem reum esse culpse, reddentem vero iilius im- 
munem. Verum tenendum est nullo modo licere uxori pati copulam sodomi- 
ticam, aut eflusionem seminis extra vas ; licet alias mors sibi comminata 
obeunda sit. Quia ea copula est intrinsece mala, pejorque fornicatione, quae 
nullo timore potest honestari ; nee est matrimoniaiis quae sola iicita est. Nee 
obstat argumentum contrarium, quoniam vir non habet potestatem in uxoris 
corpus, ad quemcumque usum, sed ad solum uxorium intra vas legitimum : 
hoc lamen libenter fatebor, si velit vir intra vas legitimum copulam habere, 
quamvis tempore effus onis stminis soleat membrum retrahere, quo sem.en ex- 
tra decidat, uxorem copulse assentientem, minime autem membri retractioni. 
jiberam esse a culpa, quia dat operam rei licit se, debitum legitime exactum 
reddens, et mahtia viri omnino extrinseca et aliena ab illo actu, nee uxor illi 
assentiens fit particeps ; quin potius dissentit culpse. — Disput. 17. Num. 3. 

Eogabis forsan, qualis culpa sit, si vir volens legitime uxori copulan, quo se 
excitet, vel majoris voluptatis captandae gratia, inchoet copulam cum ea sod- 
omiticam, non anim^o consummandi nisi intra vas legitimum, nee cum periculo 
effusionis extra illud. Qucstionem banc tetigit Navarrus ; et facile se ab ea 
expedivit, dicens tan turn reperiri peccatum tactus cujusdam illiciti, nee teneri 
virum confiteri circumstantiam sodomiae. Quare aperto solam venialem cul- 
pam in eo actu agnoscit ; nullamque reddit rationem ; et huic sententiae fa- 
vere videtur Oviedus, ubi ait omnem coitum hbidinosum excusari inter conju- 
ges, mcdo non sit periculum extraordinariae pollutionis. Atque probari potest ; 
quia quicquid conjuges efficiunt, servato ordine le2"itimo, non excedit veniale 
crimen. Vas autem servari diciiur, quoties extra illud non efFunditur semen, 
ut contigit in proesenti. Quia tactus, hie instar tactuum membri virilis cum 
manibus aut uxoris cruribus, rehquisque partibus. potest ad copulam conjuga- . 
lem referri, nimirum ut vir ea delectatione excitetur, aptiorque ad earn efficia- 
tur ; e' esto ad solam voluptatem referretur, esset culpa venialis, quales sum 
coRteri tactus ita relati ad voluptatem. — Disput. 17. Num. 4. 

Tamen conclusio sit : sanum est consilium, ut curetur simul utrumque 
semen effundi ; quare conjugi tardiori ad seminandum, consulendum est, ut 
ante concubitum tactibus venerem excitet, ut vel sic possit in ipso concubitu 
simul effundere semen. — Cajetan. — Ratio est : quia beet semen mulieris non 
sic ad generationem nectssarium, multum tamen confert ad facilius gener- 
aiidum ; turn quia vis activa senunis virilis in foemineum agens, conceptum 
pulchriorem ac nobiiiorem format; turn etiam quia foeminea matrix voluptate 
efTusionis seminis irritata ac incensa, avidivjs virile semen complectii ir. Et 
fasmineum semen valde utile est generationi, ad idque a natura institutum, 
vei ex eo convincitar, quod natura nihil frustaneum, sed universa in finem 
aliquem referens agai. Cum ergo veneream delectationem, eamque vehemen- 
tissimam in fceminae seiTunatioud constituerit, cujus manifestus testis est se- 
datio venereae concu] iscentiae ex ilia in fceminis consurgens, signum est evi- 
dens banc seminationem a natura institutam esse ad generationem, specieique 
conservationenij si Ron ut necessariam, saltern utilissimam. — Disput. 17. 
Niun. 4. 



JESUITISM. 455 

15. Francis Xaverius F!egeli ; 1750. — Ciii obligation! subjectus sit qui de- 
floravit Virginem 7 Qui corrupit volentem virginem et consentientem, praeter 
obligationem posnitendi, nullam aliam incurrit; quia puella habetjususum 
sui corporis valide concedendi, quin possint absolute impedire parentes, nisi 
eatenus quatenus tenentur cavere, ne per proles suas ofFendaturDeus.— Quest. 
Practic. de Munere Confessarii, Pars 4. Cap. 8. Num 127. 

16. 17. Buserahaum et Lacroix ; \lhl. — Taberna dicit ; puellam non pec- 
care, si ob evidens periculum mortis vel ingentis infamiae, non adhibeat omnia 
omnino media ad depellendum stupratorem : si hunc, cum posset, non occi- 
dat, si non inclamet viciniam, sed mere patiatur coitum, tamen secluse omni 
periculo consensus : et banc propositionem editis libris teneant authores plus 
quam 50, quos refert.— Theoloff. Moral. Cap. 1. 

18. Trachala; 1759.— Sebaidus concubinarius confitetur se sospius labi cum 
consanguinea quam domi alit. — An sit absolvendus antequam concubinam 
dimittat? Si in hunc finem alit consanguineam, non est absolvendus, nisi 
promittat se illam dimissurum. Sed quid, si ilia concubina sit valde bona et 
utilis economa? si nuUam aliam possit habere 1 Tali casu esset absolvendus, 
quamdiu ilia impotentia aliam acquirendi durat. — Sanchez docei, ilium qui suas 
concubinse mutuos centum aureos dedit, quos, si cam dimittat, non sit recep- 
turus, baud tenetur eam dimittere, etsi versetur in proximo periculo relabendi. 
— Si ipsa est effrons, ut dimissa prolaptura sit occultum concubinatum, re- 
tinere volenti patrocinabuntur plerique Authores : sed muniendus erit speciah- 
bus remediis et propositis : sicut et patrocinantur. si ejus sit^ancilla, ut nequeat 
aliam adipisci sine pari periculo ; cum tamen non possit carere ullo modo 
omni ancilla. — Lavacrum Conscientias ; sive Manuductio Sacerdotis ad rite 
excipiendas confessiones ; 96, 97, 98. 

Quae proxima occasio censeatar esse peccandi 7 — Occasio proxima est ilia, 
quoe moralem certitudinem lapsus facit in prudenti hominum estimatione, 
sive sunt illse circumstantise loci, temporis et personarum, &c. In quibus si 
sit constitutus, certum est rnoraliter, te peccaturum novo peccato mortali.— 
Lugo, Dicastillo, Navarras, cum aliis quos citat Gabatus, Num. 525. — Unde 
non est censendus is in occasione proxima, qui decies tentatus solum acquievit 
bis aut ter. — Lavac. Cons, sive Manuduct. Sacerdot. ad Confess. 99. 

Those are the doctrines which are inculcated by eighteen different authors, 
who lived during a period of one hundred and seventy years; and with whom 
fifty others, as Busembaum, La Croix and Taberna attest, all precisely concur. 
They inculcate a great variety of violations of the seventh commandment; 
and deliberately justify and sanction the most abhorrent crimes against per- 
sonal continence, domestic purity, and the natural instincts. That the iniquity 
of Romanism maybe full, one connected topic only shall be subjoined. 

1. Airault ; 1644. — "An licitum sit mulieri procurare abortum 7" The 
answer is in the affirmative for the followmg causes. "Ne honorem suum 
amittat, si puella; ac iiceat mulieri conjugatae, ut hoc faciat, quam ut marito 
debitum conjugale recuset, cum periculo spirituali ejus salutis." — Propositions 
die tees au Collesie de Clermont a Paris. Censures 322, 327. 

2. Joannes Marin ; 1720. — "Licet procurare abortum, ne puella occidatur 
aut infametur." The following illustration is added, " ob vitandam infamiam 
Communitatis Religioscey — Theolog. Specul. et Moral. Tract. 23. Matrimon. 
Disput. 8. Sect. 5. Num. 63, m, 67. 

In all examinations of Popery and Jesuitism, \i should ever be remem- 
bered, that the boast of the adherents of the Roman court is this ; that the 
system is always and universally identical ; and the preceding testimonies 
verify the exactitude of the claim ; for it is supreme in its enforcement of all 
iniquity, and unchangeable in its countless direful abominations. 



DECREES AND CANONS 

OP 

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 



No document concerning Popery is of so much importance and authority 
as the acts of the Council of Trent. The theological opinions, equally with 
the ecclesiastical regulations, are decided to be of universal and perpetual obU- 
gation. In a work of this character, which is designed to embody "Illustra- 
tions of Popery" deduced from authentic and indisputable sources, and chiefly 
from Romanists themselves; it is indispensable that the "decrees and can- 
ons" of their last general Council, which was assembled expressly to con- 
found the Protestant Reformers, should be incorporated : for their doctrinal 
decisions not only constitute the oracle to which every Popish controvertist 
professes to appeal, but they were composed with the utmost caution, and 
after lung protracted discussions, expressly to counteract the influence of 
those truths which the Protestants of the sixteenth century so clearly and 
boldly promulged.^ 

It is essential to remember also, that the Council of Trent indiscriminately 
ratiiied all the traditions, decrees, bulls, and enactments of every prior Pope and 
Council without exception ; and also every opinion, determination, and legend 
of tha Romish priesthood in all ages and countries, notwithstanding their im- 
pious heresy, their gross defilement, their manifold palpable contradictions, 
and their entirely revolting savageness. That great redundancy is not less 
astonishing than their cardinal concomitant defects ; for in no one of the ver- 
nacular languages, is any translation of the Sacred Scriptures admitted to 
be authentic. They are merely tolerated in those countries where they canno* 
be suppressed; but prodigious care is always exhibited, unless in very pecuhar 
circumstances, that no Papist shall draw living water from the pure wells of 
salvation. All reU^ious knowledge flows to Romanists from the stagnant 
pool of human tradition, mingled with the feculence of Papal abominations, 
through that most filthy conduit. Auricular Confession ! 

Among the proceedings of the Council of Trent, it has not been sufficiently 
exhibited by the modern expositors of Popery, that while every machination 
was craftily devised and authoritatively enjoined to decry the divine su- 
premacy of the Holy Scriptures, and the translation and diffusion of them, • 
yet they urged the belief of their own impious and vain traditions under the 
penalty of excommunication, and with the imfailing assurance, that the ut- 
most vengeance of pontifical wrath would be poured upon the rebel who dared 
to resist the 5^oke, or even to murmur against the exactions ; or who ventured 
to "search the Scriptures," and to doubt the infallibiUty, and to discard the 
claims of the Roman despotism. 

The Council of Trent, however, are not only chargeable with the dreadful 
crime of substituting their own " damnable heresies and doctrines of devils" 
for the commandments of Jehovah, and enforcing them with their anathema, 
and the dungeons and tortures of the Inquisition, and the flames of the Auto 
da Fe — but notwithstanding their long protracted and furious broils, they all 
also conspired to exterminate Christianity and Christians from the face of the 
globe. Nothing but divine interposition could possibly then have saved the 
Protestant churches, that "burning bush," from being utterly consumed. 
Probably no one measure which was projected or executed by that Council 
more lucidly develops the unghanging spirit of Popery, than the attempt to 
form a universal Papist Confederacy throughout Europe, successively to mas- 
sacre every Protestant government, and likewise all their subjects who would 
not fall down and worsnip '■' the Man of Sin and the Son of Perdition j" or, 



DECREES AND CANONS OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. 457 

as they avowed, " not to pardon or spare the life of any one of the Huguenots, 
and to efface the name of the Bourbons." 

Those traitors to mankind arranged that Philip II. king of Spain should 
first dispossess the king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. of France, of his 
dominions; in which design he was to have the assistance of the dukes of 
Guise and their associates, commonly known as the French League. From 
that measure, which was determined upon at Trent, emanated the Parisian 
massacre of 1572, and the continued civil wars which during so long a period 
desolated France with famine, slaughter, and every frightful atrocity. 

While that nefarious work of destruction was in progression throughout the 
West of Europe, the Papal Cantons of Switzerland, aided by the German 
Emperor and his vassals, were to engage in extinguishing the disciples of 
Zuingle; and the Duke of Saxony was to raze the city of Geneva, ^^ putting 
to the point of the sword, or casting into the lake, every living soul who shall 
be found in it, without distinction of sex or ageP 

Having finished those tragedies, all the Papal powers covenanted to subdue 
the Lutherans, and to transform the North-Western part of Germany into one 
grand charnel-house from the Alps to the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. 
After which, the whole of the continent was to be arrayed against Britain, 
whence originated the Spanish Armada ; and in which the wealth and energy 
of Spain were irrecoverably drowned. 

The Cardinals, Prelates, and other Ecclesiastics consented to appropriate a 
lar^e portion of their exorbitant revenues for that general cMisade ; and " any 
ecclesiastic or Priest who had an inclination to take up arms, was permitted to 
enrol himself for that war so holy, without any scruple of conscience." — Dis- 
cours des Conjurations, cf-c. 1565. 

That such a body should have issued the ensuing "decrees and canons" is 
consistent. They were graphically described by the Apostle Paul, 1 Tim. 4 : 
1, 2, as "seducing spirits, speaking Ues in hypocrisy." 



Creed of Faith. — " In the name of the holy and undivided Trinity, Fa- 
ther, Son, and Holy Ghost. 

" The sacred, holy, oecumenical and general Council of Trent, lawfully as- 
sembled in the Holy Spirit, under the presidency of Cardinals De Monte, Santa 
Croce, and Pole, the three legates of the apostolic see ; — considering the im- 
portance of the subjects to be discussed, and es]3ecia)ly of those which are in- 
cluded in these two articles, the extirpation of heresies, and the reformation of 
manners, for which causes chiefly the council has been assembled ; — more- 
over, acknowledging with the apostle, that its 'wrestling is not against flesh 
and blood, but against the spirits of wickedness in high places,' doth in the 
first place, after tlie example of the same apostle, exhort all persons to ' be 
strengthened in the Lord, and in the might of his power, in all things taking 
the shield of faith, wherewith they may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts 
of the most wicked one, and the helmet of salvation with the sword of the 
spirit, which is the word of God.' Therefore, that this its pious care may, 
both in its commencement and its progress, enjoy the favour of God, it hath 
appointed and decreed, that before all things confession of faith be made; fol- 
lowing in this the examples of the fathers, who were accustomed, in their 
sacred councils, at the very bemnning of their proceedings, to hold up this 
shield against all heresies ; by wliich means alone they have not unfrequently 
drawn infidels to the faith, confuted heretics, and confirmed believers. 
Wherefore, the council hath thought proper to recite in that form of words 
which is read in all churches, the confession of faith adopted by the holy 
Roman church, which contains the first principles in which all who profess 
the faith of Christ necessarily agree, and is the firm and only foundation, 
against which the gates of hell shall never prevail. It is as follows : — 

"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, 
and of all things visible and invisible, xlnd in one Lord Jesus Christ, the 
39 



458 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

only begotten Son of God, and born of the Father before all ages. God of 

God ; Light of Light ; tiTie God of true God ; begotten, not made ; consubstan- 
tial to the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men, and for 
our salvation, came down from heaven, and became incarnate by the Holy 
Giiost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. He was ci-ucified also for us, 
suffered under Pontius Pilate, and was buried. And the third day he rose 
agiin according to the Scriptures ; and ascended into heaven, sitteth at the 
right hand of the Father ; and he is to come again with glory to judge both the 
living and the dead, of whose kingdom there shall be no end. And in the 
Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and 
the Son ; who together with the Father and the Son, is adored and glorified; 
who spoke by the prophets. And one Holy, catholic, and apostolic church. 
I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. And I expect the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen." 



The Canonical Scriptures. — The sacred, holy, cecumenical and general 
council of Trent^ lawfully assemibled in the Holy Spirit, the three before 
mentioned legates of the apostolic see presiding therein ; bearing constantly 
in view the removal of error and the preservation of the purity of the gospel in 
the church, which gospel, promised before by the prophets in the sacred 
Scriptures, was first orally pubhshed by our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of 
God, who afterwards commanded it to be preached by his apostles to every 
creature, as the source of all saving truth and discipline ; and perceiving that 
this truth and discipline are contained both in written books and in unwritten 
traditions, which have come dowm to us, either received by the apostles from 
the lip of Christ himself, or transmitted by the hands of the same apostles, 
under the dictation of the Holy Spirit ; following the example of the orthodox 
fathers, doth receive and reverence, with equal piety and veneration, all the 
books, as well of the Old as of the New Testament, the same God being the 
author of both — and also the aforesaid traditions, pertaining both to faith and 
manners, whether received from Christ himself, or dictated by the Holy 
Spirit, and preserved in the Cathohc church by continual suCv-es«^on. More- 
over, lest any doubt should arise respecting the sacred books wnich are re- 
ceived by the council, it has been judged proper to insert a hst of them in the 
present decree. 

"They are these: of the Old Testament, the five books of Moses. — 
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy ; Joshua ; Judges; 
Ruth ; four books of Kings ; tv/o books of Chronicles ; the first and second of 
Esdras, the latter is called Nehemiah ; Tobh ; .Judith ; Esther ; Job ; the 
Psalms of David, in number 150 ; the Proverbs ; Ecclesiastes ; the Song of 
Songs ; Wisdom ; Ecclesiasticus ; Isaiah ; Jeremiah, with Baruch ; Ezeki- 
el ; Daniel ; the twelve minor Prophets, — Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, 
Jonah, Micah, Nahum., Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Mala- 
chi ; and two books of Maccabees, the first and second. Of the New Tes- 
tament, the four Gospels, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ; 
the Acts of the Apostles written by the Evangelist Luke ; fourteen Epistles of 
the Apostle Paul, — to the Romans, two to the Corinthians, to the Gala- 
tians, to the Ephesians, to the Philippians, to the Colossians, two to the Thes- 
salonians, two to Timothy, to Titus, to Philemon, and to the Hebrews ; two 
of the Apostle Peter ; three of the Apostle John ; one of the Apostle James ; 
one of the Apostle Jude ; and the Revelation of the Apostle John. Whoever 
shall not receive, as sacred and canonical, all those books and every part of 
them, as they are commonly read in the Cathohc Church, and are contained 
in the old Vulgate Latin edition, or shall knowingly and deliberately despise 
the aforesaid traditions : let him be accursed. The foundation being "thus laid 
in the confession of faith, all m.ay understand the manner in which the coun- 
cil intends to proceed, and what proofs and authorities will be principally 
used in establishing doctrine and restoriag order ia the church. 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 459 

The Editiox and use of the Sacred Books. — "Moreover, the same most 

holy council, considering tliat no small advantage will accrue to the church of 
God, if of all the Latin editions of the Sacred Book which are in circulat.on, 
some one shall be distinguished as that which ought to be regarded as authen- 
tic — doth ordain and declare, that the same old and Vulgate edition, which has 
been approved by its use in the church for so many ages, shall be held as au- 
thentic, in all p'tblic lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions ; and 
that no one shall dare or presume to reject it, under any pretence whatso- 
ever. 

"-In order to restrain petulant m'nds, the council further decrees, that in 
matters of faith and morals and whatever relates to the maintenance of Chris- 
tian doctrine, no one, confiding in his own judgment, shall dare to wrest the 
sacred Scriptures to liis own sense of them, contrary to that which hath been 
held and still is held by holy mother church, whose right it is to judge of the 
true meaning and interpretation of Sacred Writ ; or contrary to the unani- 
mous consent uf the fathers ; even though such interpretations should never be 
published. If any disobey, let him be denounced by the ordinaries, and pun- 
ished according to law. 

''Being desirous also, as is reasonable, of setting bounds to the printers, 
who with unlimited boldness, supposing themselves at liberty to do as they 
please, print editions of the Holy Scriptures with notes and expositions taken 
indifferently from any writer, without the permission of their ecclesiastical su- 
periors, and that at a concealed or falsely- designated press, and, which is 
worse, v/ithout the name of the author — and also rashly expose books of this 
nature to sale in other countries ; the holy council decrees and ordains, that 
for the future the sacred Scriptures, and especially the old Vulgate edition, shall 
be printed in the most correct manner possible ; and no one shall be permitted- 
to print, or cause to be printed any books relating to religion without the 
name of the author; neither shall any one hereafter sell such books, or even 
retain them in his possession, unless they have been first examined and ap- 
proved by the ordinary, under penalty of anathema, and the pecuniary fine 
adjudged by the last council of Lateran. And if they be regulars, they shall 
obtain, besides this examination and approval, the license of their superiors, 
who shall examine the books according to the forms of their statutes. Those 
who circulate or publish them in manuscript without being examined and ap- 
proved, shall be liable to the same penalties as the printers ; and those who 
possess or read them, unless they declare the authors of them, shall them- 
selves be considered as the author. The approbation of books of this descrip- 
tion shall be given in writing, and shall be placed in due form on the title-page 
of the book, w^hether manuscript or printed ; and the whole, that is, the exam- 
ination and the approval, shall be gratuitous, that what is deserving may be 
approved, and what is unworthy maybe rejected. 

"Finally, the holy council wishing to repress the audacity of those who 
apply and pervert words and sentences of Holy Scripture to profane uses, 
making them serve for railleries, vain and fabulous applications, flatteries, de- 
tractions, superstitions, impious and diabolical incantations, divinations, lots, 
and infamous libels ; commands and ordains, in order to abolish this kind of 
irreverence and contempt, and to prevent any one from daring for the future 
to abuse the words of Scripture in this or any shnilar way, that such persons 
shall be punished at the discretion of the Bishops, as Wxlful violators of the 
word of God, in the manner prescribed by law. 



OiiiGiNAL Sin. — "' That our Catholic faith, without which it is impossible to 
please God, may be cleansed from error and remain in its purity, whole and un- 
(iofiled, and t' at Christian people mav not be carried about with every wind of 
doctrine ; the sacred, ho!y,a^cumenical and ijeneral council of Trent, lawfully as- 
sembled, (fee. wishing to -reclaim the wandering and confirm such as waver, doth 
in the following manner decree, confess, and declare concerning original sin, 



460 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

according to the authority of the sacred Scriptures, venerable fathers, approv- 
ed councils, and the judgment and consent of the church. For among tho 
many evils with which the old serpent, the perpetual enemy of the human 
race, has troubled the church in our times, is this, that he has revived the old 
and excited new dissensions respecting original sin and the remedy thereof. 

" 1. Whoever shall not confess that when Adam, the first man. transgressed 
the commandment of God given him in paradise, he lost immediately the 
purity and righteousness in which he was created, and by the sin of his pre- 
varication incurred the wrath and indignation of God, and consequently death, 
with which God had before threatened him ; and with death captivity to him 
who thence hath the power of death, that is the devil ; so that by this offence 
of prevarication the whole man was changed for the worse, both in body and 
soiil : let him be accursed. 

" 2. Whoever shall affirm that Adam's prevarication injured himself only, 
and not his posterity, and that he lost the purity and righteousness which he 
had received from God, for himself only, and not also for us ; or that when he 
became polluted by disobedience he transmitted to ail mankind corporal death 
and punishment only, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul : let him 
be accursed. For he contradicts the xlpostle, who saith, ' By one man sin 
entered into this world, and death by sin, and so death passed, upon all men, 
in whom all have sinned.' Rom. v. 12. 

" 3. Whoever shall affirm, that this sin of Adam, which originally was one 
otfence only, but being transmitted to all by propagation, not by imitation, 
becomes the sin of all, can be taken aw^ay by the strength of human nature, 
or by any other remedy than the merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one Me- 
diator, who hath reconciled us to God by his blood, and is made to us jus- 
tice, sanctification, and redemption ; 1 Cor. i. 30 ; or shall deny that the 
merit of Christ Jesus is applied, both to adults and infants, by the sacrament of 
baptism, lightly administered according to the forms of the church : let him be 
accursed. ' For there is no other name under heaven given to men, w^here- 
by we must be saved.' Acts iv. 12. Whence that saying, ' Behold the Lamb 
of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world,' John i. 29 ; and 
that other, ' As many of you as have been baptized, have put on Christ,' 
Gal. iii. 27. 

" 4. W^hosoever shall affirm, that new-born infants,even though sprung from 
baptized parents, ought not to be baptized ; or shall say, though they are bap- 
tized for the remission of sins, yet they derive not from Adam that original 
guilt which must be expiated in the laver of regeneration, in order to obtain 
eternal life; whence it must follow in those instances the form of baptism is 
not sincerely but deceitfully administered : let him be accursed. For those 
words of the Apostle, ' By one man sin entered into the world, and death by 
sin, and so'death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned,' are to be un- 
derstood in no other way than that in which the Catholic church, diffused 
through the whole world, hath understood them. For even httle chil- 
dren, who could not themselves commit sin, are by this rule of faith truly bap- 
tized for the remission of sins, accordins^ to apostolic tradition, that in regener- 
ation that may be cleansed away which was contracted in generation. For 
'unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter 
into the kingdom of God,' John iii. 5. 

" 5. Whoever shall deny that the guilt of original sin is remitted by the 
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, bestowed in baptism ; or shall affirm that that 
wherein sin truly and properly consists is not wholly rooted up, but is only 
cut down or not imputed : let him be accursed. For God hates nothing in the 
regenerate, because there is no condemnation to those who are truly buried 
with Ciirisl in baptism unto death, who walk not after the flesh, but put- 
ting off' the old man, and putting on the new, which according to God, is 
created, are made innocent, immaculate, pure, harmless, the beloved of God, 
and even heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, so that nothing can wholly 
prevent them from entering into heaven. Nevertheless, this holy council 
doth confess and feel that concupiscence, or the fuel of sin, doth still remain 



COUNCIL OF TRExN'T. 461 

in the baptized ; which being left to try them will not hurt those who do not 
yield thereto, but manfully resist, through the grace of Christ Jesus ; on the 
contrary, ' he who shall strive lawfully, shall be crowned,' 2 Tim. ii. 5. The 
holy council declares that the Catholic church hath never understood that 
this concupiscence, which the apostle soraetiaies calls sin, is so called sm, as if 
there were truly and properly sin in the regenerate, but because it is of sin, 
and inclines to sin. Whoever thinks differently: let him be accursed. 

" The holy council further declares, that it is not its design to ii. elude in 
this decrecj which treats of original sin, the blessed and immaculate Virgin 
Mary, mother of God ; but that the constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV., of bless- 
ed memory, are to be observed, under the penalties contained in the same ; 
which are hereby renewed." 



Justification. — " Seeing that in this age m.any errors are disseminated, con- 
cerning the doctrine of justification ; errors destructive to the souls of many, 
and highly injurious to the unity of the church : the sacred, holy, cecumenical, 
and general council of Trent, lawfully assembled, &c. seeking the praise and 
glory of Almighty God, the tranquillity of the church, and the salvation of souls, 
doth intend to explain to all the faithful in Christ that true and whc.lesome doc- 
trine of justification, which Christ Jesus, the sun of righteousness, the author 
and finisher of our fauh, hath taught, the Apostles delivered, and the Catholic 
church, instructed by the Holy Spirit, hath ever retained, strictly enjoining 
that henceforth no one dare to believe, preach, or teach, otherwise than is ap- 
pointed and declared* by the present decree. 

I. Inability of Nature and the Law to justify Men. 

"In the first place, the holy council maintains that it is necessary, in order 
to understand the doctrine of justification truly and well, that every one 
should acknowledge and confess, that since all men had lost innocence by 
Adam's prevarication, and had become unclean, and as the Apostle says, 'by 
nature children of wrath,' as is expressed in the decree on origin il sin, they 
were so completely the slaves of sin, and under the power of the cievil and of 
death, that neither could the Gentiles be liberated or rise again by the power 
of nature, nor even the Jews, by the letter of the law of Moses. Nevertheless, 
free will was not wholly extinct in them, though weakened and bowed down. 

II. Dispensation and Mystery of the Advent of Christ. 

"Whence it came to pass, that when the blessed fulness of time came, the 
heavenly Father, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, sent to men 
Christ Jesus his Son, who had been spoken of and promised by many holy 
men, both before the law and during the time of the lav/ ; that he might re- 
deem the Jews, who were under the law, that the Gentiles who had not fol- 
lowed after justice might attain to justice, and that all might receive the adop- 
tion of sons. Him hath God set forth as a propitiation for our sins, through 
faith in his blood ; yet not for our sins only, but also for those of the whole 
world. 

III. Who are justified by Christ. 

" But though he died for all, yet all receive not the benefit of his death, but 
those only to whom the merit of his passion is imparted. For as men could 
not be born unrighteous, were they not the seed of Adam, contracting real 
guilt by being his posterity ; so, unless they were renewed in Christ, they 
would never be justified, since that renewal is bestowed upon them by the 
merit of his passion, through grace, by which grace they become just. For 
this blessing the apostle exhorts us always to give thanks to God the Father, 
who hath made us worthy to be partakers of the lot of the saints in light, 
hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into 

39* 



462 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption and the 
remission of sins. Col. i. 12 — 14. 

IV. Description of the Justijication of the Ungodly, and the manner thereof 
^ in a state of Grace. 

" In which words is contained a description of the justification of the ungod- 
ly, which is a translation from that state in which man is born a child of the 
first Adam, into a state of grace and adoption of the children of God, bv Jesus 
Christ our Saviour, the second Adam. Which translation, now that the gos- 
pel is published, cannot be accomphshed without the laver of the regenera- 
tion, or the desire thereof: as it is written. 'Unless a man be born again of 
water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' John 
iii. 5. 

V. Necessity and source of Preparation for Justification in adult persons. 

" The council further declares, that in adult persons the beginning of justi- 
fication springs from the preventing grace of God, through Christ Jesus ; that 
is, from his calling, wherewith they are called, having in themselves no 
merits ; so that those w^ho, in consequence of sin, were alienated from God, 
are disposed to betake themselves to his method of justifying them, by his 
grace, which excites and helps them, and with which grace they freely agree 
and co-operate. Thus, while God touches the heart of man by the illumina- 
tion of his Holy Spirit, man is not altogether passive, since he receives that 
influence which he had power to reject ; while, on the other hand, he could 
not of his free will, without the grace of God, take any step towards righte- 
ousness before him. Hence, when it is said in the sacred Scriptures, ' Turn 
ye to me, and I will turn to you ;' Zech. i. 3. ; we are reminded of our freedom. 
When we reply, ' Turn us to thyself, O Lord, and we shall be turned,' we con- 
fess that we are influenced by the grace of God. 

VI. Mode of Preparation. 

" Men are disposed for this righteousness, when excited and aided by divine 
grace, and receiving faith by hearing, they are freely drawn to God, believinor 
that those thmgs are true which are divinely revealed and promised, and this 
chiefly, that God justifies the sinner by his grace, through the redemption 
which is in Christ Jesus : and when, perceiving that they are sinners, and 
moved by that fear of divine justice with which they are salutarily smitten, 
they are by the consideration of God's mercy encouraged to hope, trust that 
he will be propitious to them for Christ's sake, begin to love him as the fountain 
of all righteousness, and consequently regard sin with a certain hatred and ab- 
horrence, that is, with that penitence which must necessarily exist before bap- 
tism ; and finally, when they resolve to receive baptism, to begin a new life, 
and to keep the divine commandments. Of this disposition it is written, 'He 
that Cometh to God must believe that he is, and is a rewarder to them that 
seek him,' Heb. xi. 6 ; and 'Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee,' 
Matt. ix. 2; and 'The fear of the Lorddriveth out sin,' Ecclesiasticus i. 27 ; and, 
' Do penance, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, 
for the remission of yx)ur sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy 
Ghost,' Acts ii. 38 ; and ' Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing 
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, 
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you,' 
Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. Lastly, ' Prepare your hearts unto the Lord,' 1 oam. 
vii. 5. 

VII. Nature and causes of Justification of the Ungodly. 

"Justification itself follows this disposition or preparation ; and justification 
is not remission of sin merely, but also sanctificativn, and the renewal of the 
inner man by the voluntary reception of grace and divine gifts, so that he who 
was unrighteous is made righteous, and^ths enemy becomes a friend, and an 



coi'xciL or TnrxT. 463 

heir according to the hope of eternal life. The causes of justification are these : 
the final cause, the glory of God and of Christ, and life eternal ; the efficient 
cause, the merciful God, who freely cleanses and sanctifies, sealing and 
anointing with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheri- 
taiice.; the meritorious cause, his v/ell-beloved and only-begotten Son, Jesus 
Christ our Lord, who, through his great love wherewith he loved us, even 
when we were enemies, merited justification for us by his most holy passion 
on the cross, and made satisfaction for us to God ihe Father; the instrumen- 
tal cause, the sacrament of baptism, which is the sacrament of faith without 
which no one can ever obtain justification ; lastly, the sole formal cause is the 
righteousness of God; not that by which he himself is righteous, but that by 
which he makes us righteous ; with which being endued by him, we are re- 
newed in the spirit of our mind, and are not only accounted righteous, but are 
properly called righteous, and are so receiving righteousness in ourselves, 
each according to his measure, which the Holy Spirit bestows upon each as 
he wills, and according to our respective dispositions and co-operation. For 
although no one can be righteous unless the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ 
are imparted to him, yet this takes place in justification of the ungodly, when, 
for the sake of his most holy passion, the love of God is infused in the hearts of 
those who are justified, and abides in them. Therefore when a man is justified, 
and united to Jesus Christ, he receives, together with remission of sins, the 
following gifts, bestowed upon him at the same time, namely, faith, hope, and 
charity. For faith does not perfectly join us to Christ, nor make us living 
members of his body, unless hope and charity accompanyit; for which reason 
it is most truly said, ' faith v/ithout v/orks is dead' and void, James i. 20. ; and 
'in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing;, nor uncircumcision, 
but faith that worketh by charity,' Gal. v. 6. It is this faith that catechu- 
mens ask of the church before they receive the sacrament of baptism, accord- 
ing to apostolic tradition ; for they seek that faith v/hich procures eternal life, 
which faith cannot procure, separately from hope and charity. Therefore, 
they are immediately reminded of the words of Christ, ' if thou v/ilt enter into 
life, keep the commandments,' Matt. xix. 17. Then receiviug, in their regen- 
eration, true and christian righteousness, as the best robe, white and spotless, 
bestowed on them through Christ Jesus, instead of that which Adam lost by his 
disobedience, both for himself and us, they are commanded to preserve the 
same, that they may present it before the tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
and possess eternal life. 

VIII. How is it to he understood that ihe Ungodly are justified by F'aithj 

and freely. 
*' When the apostle says that man is justified ' by faith,' and ' freely,' these 
words are to be understood in that sense in which the Cathohc church hath 
always held and explained them ; namely, that we are said to be justified ' by 
faith,' because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and 
root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God, and come 
into the fellowship of his children : and that we are said to be justified * free- 
Iv,' because nothing which precedes justification, whether faith or works, can 
cleserve the grace thereof. ' For if by grace, then it is not novv' by works ;' 
otherwise, as the same apostle saith, * Grace is no more grace.' Rom. xi. 6. • 

IX. Against the vain confidence of the Heretics. 
" But although it must be believed that sin is not forgiven, nor ever was for- 
given, unless freely, by the mercy of God, for Christ's sake ; yet no one is au- 
thorized to affirm that his sins are or vvill be forgiven, who boasts of the 
assurance and certainty thereof, and rests only on that assurance ; seeing 
that this vain and impious confidence may exist among heretics and schisma- 
tics, and does actually prevail in these times, and is fiercely contended for, in 
opposition to the Cathohc church. It is on no account to be maintained, tha* 
tnose who are really justified ought to feel fully assured of the fact, without 
any doubt whatever ; or that none are absolved and justified but those who 



464 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE ^ 

believe themselves to be so ; or that by this faith only absolution and justifica- 
tion are procured ; as if he who does not beheve this, doubts the promises of 
God, and the efficacy of the death and resurrection of Christ. For while no god- 
ly person ought to doubt the mercy of God, the merit of Christ, or the virtue and 
efficacy of the sacraments ; so on the other hand, whoever considers his own 
infirmity and corruption, may doubt and fear whether he is in a state of grace ; 
since no one can certainly and infallibly know that he has obtained the grace 
of God. 

X. Increase of actual Justification. 
" Thus, therefore, those who are justified and made the friends and servants 
of God, go from strength to strength, and are renev>^ed5 as the apostle says, 
*day by day :' that is, mortifying the members of their flesh, and ' presenting 
them as instruments of justice, unto sanctification ;' Rom. vi. 13, 19: by the 
observance of the commandments of God and the church, faith co-operating 
with good works, they eain an increase of that righteousness which was re- 
ceived by the grace of Clirist, and are the more justified. As it is written, ' He 
that is just, let him be justified still,' Rev. xxii. 1 1 ; and again, ' Be not afraid 
to be justified, even to death,' Ecclesiasticus xviii. 22 ; and again, ' Do you 
see that by works a m.an is justified, and not by faith only 7' James ii. 24. 
Holy Church seeks this increase of righteousness, when she prays, ' Grant us 

Lord, an increase of faith, hope, and charity 1 ' 

XI. Necessity and possibility of keeping the Commandments. 
" But no one ought to think that, because he is justified, he is released from 
obligation to keep the commandments ; nor is that rash saying to be used, 
which the fathers have prohibited and anathematized, ' that it is impossible 
for a justified man to keep God's precepts :' for God does not enjoin impossi- 
bilities, but commands, and admonishes us to d > what we can, and to ask 
his help for what we cannot perform, and by his grace we are strength- 
ened. Whose commandments are not heavy, whose yoke is sweet, and 
his burden hght, 1 John v. 3. Matt. xi. 30. The children of God love 
Christ ; but those who love him ' keep his words,' as he himself testi- 
fieth, John xiv. 23 ; which by divine aid they are able to do. For though 
the most holy and righteous persons, while they are in t.:is morial life, may 
daily commit small oflences, which are termed venial, they do not on that ac- 
count cease to be righteous..: ' forgive us our debts' is the humble and sincere 
prayer of the just. Therefore the just should consider themselves the more 
bound to walk in the ways of righteousness, because, being freed from sin and 
become servants of God, they are able to persevere in a sober, righteous, and 
pious life, through Christ Jesus, by whom they have access into this grace. 
For God does not forsake those who are once justified by his grace, unless he 
is first forsaken by them. No one therefore ought to flatter himself on ac- 
count of his faith only, supposing that by faith alone he is made an heir, and 
shall obtain the inheritance, although he has not suffered v.dth Christ, that he 
may be glorified together. For Christ himself, as the apostle affirms, ' though 
he was the Son of God, learned obedience by the things which he suffered, 
and being consummated, he became to all who obey hirn the cause of eternal 
salvation.' Heb. v. 8, 9. Wherefore the same apostle admonishes the justifi- 
ed in these words : 'Know you not that they that run in the race, all run in- 
deed, but one receiveth the prize ? So run that you may obtain 

1 tlierefore so run, not as at uncertainty ; I so fight, not as one beating the air : 
but I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, when I 
have preached to others I myself become a cast-away.' 1 Cor. ix. 24 — 27. To 
the same effect Peter, the prince of the apostles : ' Labour the more, that by 
good works you may make sure your calling and election : for doin^ these 
things you shall not sin at any time.' 2 Pet. i. 10. Whence it is plain that 
they are enemies to the orthodox doctrine of religion, who affirm that the just 
man sins in every good work, at least venially ; or, which is yet more intol- 
erable, that he deserves everlasting punishment ; and they also are enemies, 
who maintain that the just sin in all works in whichj by way of rousing them- 



1 



COUNCIL or TRENT. 465 

selves from their sloth, and stimulating their diligence in running the christian 
race, they set before their minds the eternal reward, as well as the glory of 
Grod, which is first of all to be regarded ; since it is written, 'I have inclined 
my heart to do thy justification for ever, for the reward,' Psalm cxix. 112. 
And the apostle says of Moses, 'that he looked unto the reward,' Heb. xi. 
26. 

XII. Tlie rash confidence of Predestination is to he avoided. 

"Let no man, while he continues in this mortal state, so far presume re- 
specting the hidden mystery of divine predestination, as to conclude that he is 
certainly one of the predestinate ; as if it were true that a justified man cannot 
§in any more, or that if he sin, he can assure himself of repentance ; for no 
one can know whom God hath chosen for himself, unless by special revela- 
tion. 

XIII. l.lie gift of Perseverance. 

" In like manner concerning the gift of perseverance, of which it is WTitten, 
*he that shall persevere to the end, ne shall be saved,' Matt. xxiv. 13. ; which 
gift can only be received from him who is able to estabhsh him who stands, 
that he may continue to stand, and to restore the fallen. Let no one indulge 
himself in the assurance of absolute certainty ; although it behoves all to place 
the strongest confidence in the help of God. For as God hath begun a good 
work, so he will perfect it, working in them both to will and to accomphsh, 
Phil. i. 6., ii. 13. unless they fail of his grace. Nevertheless, let those who 
think they stand, take heed lest they fall, and work out their own salvation 
with fear and trembling, by labours, by watchings, by alms, by prayers, by 
ofterings, by fasts, and by chastity. For they ought to fear, knowing that they 
are renewed, to the hope of glory, but are not yet in elory, being still engaged 
in conflict with the flesh, the world, and the devil; in which conflict they 
cannot overcome, unless by the grace of God they obey the apostolic word, 
which saith, ' We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh ; for 
if you live according to the flesh, you shall die ; but if by the Spirit you mortify 
the deeds of the body, you shall live.' Rom. viii. 12, 13. 

XIV. llic Lapsed^ and their Recovery, 
Those who by sin have fallen from the grace of justification received may be 
justified again, when, moved by divine influence, they succeed in recovering 
their lost grace by the sacrament of penance, through the merits of Christ. 
For this method of justification is that recovery of the lapsed which the holy 
fathers have fitly called the ' second plank after shipwreck* of lost grace. 
Moreover, Christ Jesus instituted the sacrament of penance, for those who 
may fall into sin after baptism, when he said, ' receive ye die Holy Ghost ; 
whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them ; and whose sins you 
shall retain, they are retained,' .John xx. 22, 23. Therefore we must teach 
that the penance of a Christian man after his fall is very different from baptis- 
mal penance, and includes not only the cessation from sin, and the hatred 
thereof or a contrite and humble heart, but also the sacramental confession of 
sin, at least in desire, to be performed in due time, with priestly absolution; sat- 
isfaction also, by fasts, alms, prayers, and other pious exercises of the spiritual 
life ; not satisfaction for eternal punishment, which together with the offence, 
is remitted by the sacrament, or the desire thereof— but for the temporal pun- 
ishment, which, as the Sacred Scriptures teach, is not always remitted, as it 
is in baptism to those who being unejrateful for the grace of God which they 
received, have grieved the Holy Spirit and dared to profane the temple of God. 
Of this penance it is written, ' Be mindful, therefore, from whence thou art 
fallen, and do penance, and do the first works.' Rev. ii. 5. And again, 'The 
sorrow that is according to God worketh penance, stedfast unto salvation,' 
2 Cor. vii. 10. And again, ' Do penance, and bring forth fruit worthy of pen- 
ance,' Mat. iii. 2, and iv. 17. 

XV. Grace^ although not Faith^ may he lost by any Mortal Sin. 
"We must maintain, in opposition to the artful schemes of some men, who 



466 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

by smooth words and flattery deceive innocent minds, that although faith is 
not lost, the received grace of justification may be, not only by infidelity, in 
which even faith itself is lost, but also by any other mortal sin; in this up- 
holding the doctrine of the divine word, which not only excludes unbelievers 
from the kingdom of God, but believers also, such as fornicators, adulterers, 
the effeminate, those who defile themselves with mankind, cuvetous persons, 
drunkards, railers, extortioners, and all others who commit deadly sin, from 
which they might abstain by the help of divine grace, and for which they are 
separated from the grace of Christ. 

XVI. Fruit of Jiistijlcation ; that is, the merit of good works, and tlie reason 

of that merit. 

" For this reason the v/ords of the apostles are to be addressed to the justi- 
fied, whether they have always preserved the grace they received, or whether 
they have recovered it after it was lost : ' Abound in every good work, know- 
ing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.' 1 Cor. xv. 58 : ' For God is 
not unjust, that he should forget your work, and the love which you have 
shown in his name,' Heb. vi. 10 : and ' Do not therefore lose your confidence, 
which hath a great reward.' Heb. x. 35. Therefore eternal life is to be set 
before those who persevere in good works to the end, and hope in God, both 
as a favour mercifully promised to the children of God through Christ Jesus, 
and as a reward to be faithfully rendered to iheir good works and irierits, ac- 
cording to the divine engagement. For this is the ' crovvn of justice' which 
the apostle said v/as iaiaup for him and would be rendered to him by the just 
Judge, after he had fought his fight and finished his course ; and not to him 
only, but to all them also that love his coming, 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8. And seeing that 
Christ Jesus imparts energy to the justified, as the head to the members, and 
the vine to the branches ; which energy always precedes, accompanies, and tol- 
lows their good works, and without v*diich they could not be acceptable to God, 
nor meritorious ; it must be beheved that the justified are in no respect deficient, 
but that they may be considered as fully satisfying the divine law, as far as is 
compatible with our present condition, by their works, which are wrought in 
God, and as really deserving eternal life, to be bestowed in due time, if they 
die in a state of grace ; for Christ our Saviour saith, ' He that shall drink of 
the water that I shall give him, shall not thirst for ever, but the water that I 
shall give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into hfe 
everlasting.' John iv. 13, 14. So that neither is our righteousness set up as 
if it were actually derived from ourselves, nor is the righteousness of God un- 
known or disallowed. For it is called our righteousness, because we are justi- 
fied thereby, through its indwelling in us ; and at the same time it is the righ- 
teousness of God, because it is infused into us by God, through the merits of 
Christ. Nevertheless, it is not to be forgotten, that thougli the sacred Scrip- 
tures attach so much value to good works, that Christ promises ' that whoso- 
ever shall give to drink to one of his little ones a cup of cold water only he 
shall not lo'se his reward,' Mat. x. 42, and the apostle testifies that ' that 
which is at present momentary and light of our affliction vvorketh for us above 
measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory,' 2 Cor. iv. 17; yet far be it 
from a Christian man that he should trust or glory in himself, and not in the 
Lord, whose goodness tov.-ards all men is so great, that he wills those excel- 
lencies which are his own gifts to be also regarded as their merits. And since 
in many things we all offend, every one ought to set before his eyes the se- 
verity and justice of God, as svell as his mercy and goodness, nor "judge iiim- 
self, although unconscious of guilt : for the actions of men are not to be exam- 
ined and judged by human judgment, but by God's ; v/ho both will bring to 
light the hidden things of darkness, and \vill make manifest the counsels of 
the hearts, and then shall every man have praise from God,' who, it is written, 
* will render to every man according to his works.' 1 Cor. iv. 5 ; Rom. ii. 6. 

*'To this exposition of the Catholic doctrine of justification, without a sin- 
cere and firm faith in which no one can be justiried, the holy council hath 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 4Cy 

thought fit to subjoin these canons, that all may know, not only what is to be 
held and followed, but also what is to be rejected and shunned : 

" Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm, that a man may be justified before God 
by his own works, \vhether performed by the strength of human nature, or ac- 
cording to the teaching of the law, without the grace of God in Christ Jesus ; 
let him be accursed. 

" 2. Whoever shall affirm, that divine grace by Christ Jesus was given to 
this end only, that man midit be better able to live righteously, and deserve 
eternal life, as if he could do both by his own free w3l, although with ex- 
treme difficulty : let him be accursed. 

" 3. Whoever shall affirm, that man is able to believe, hope, love, or repent 
as he ought, so as to attain to the grace of justification, without the preventing 
influence and aid of the Holy Spirit : let him be accursed. 

" 4. Whoever shall affirm, that when man's free will is moved and wrought 
upon by God, it does in no respect co-operate and consent to divine influence 
and caUingso as to dispose and prepare him to obtain the grace of justification ; 
or that he cannot refuse if he would, but is like a lifeless thing, altogether 
inert, and merely passive : let him be accursed. 

" 5. Whoever shall affirm, that the free will of man has been lost and ex- 
tinct since the fall of Adam ; or that it exists only in name, or rather as a 
name without substance ; or that it is a fiction, introduced by Satan into the 
church : let him be accursed. 

" 6. Whoever shall affirm, that it is not in the power of man to commit sin 
of himself, but that evil as well as good works are wrought by God, not only 
permissively, but really, as his own act ; so that the treachery of Judas was 
no less his work than the caUingof Paul : let him be accursed. 

" 7. Whoever shall affirm, that all works done before justification, in what- 
ever way performed, are actually sins, and deserve God's hatred ; or that the 
more earnestly a man labom-s to dispose himself for grace, he does but sin the 
more : let him be accursed. 

" 8. Whoever shall affirm, that the fear of hell, under the influence of which 
we flee to the mercy of God, sorrowing for sin and abstaining therefrom, is 
itself sin, or mxakes sinners worse : let him be accursed. 

"9. W^hoever shall affirm, that the ungodly is justified by faith only, so 
that it is to be understood that nothing else is to be required, to co-operate 
therewith in order to obtain justification ; and that it is on no account necessa- 
ry that he should prepare and dispose himself by the effect of his own will : 
let him be accursed. 

" 10. Whoever shall affirm, that men are justified without the righteous- 
ness of Christ, by which he has merited for us ; or that ihey are thereby for- 
mally just : let him be accursed. 

" 11. Whoever shall affirm, that men are justified solely by the imputation 
of the righteousness of Christ, or the remission of sin, to the exclusion of 
grace and charity, which is shed abroad in their hearts, and inheres in 
them ; or that the grace by which w^e are justified is only the favour of God : 
let him be accursed. 

" 12. Whoever shall affirm, that justifying faith is nothing else than confi- 
dence in the divine mercy, by which sins are forgiven for Christ's sake ; or that 
it is that confidence only by which we are justified : let him be accursed. 

" 13. Whoever shall affirm, that in order to obtain the forgiveness of sin it 
is necessary in all cases that the individaal should firmly believe, without any 
doubt concerning his own infirmity and corruption, that his sins are forgiven : 
let him be accursed. 

" 14. Whoever shall affirm, that a man is forgiven and justified, because he 
stedfastly believes that he is forgiven and justified ; or that no one is tnily 
justified unless he believes himself to be so ; or that it is by such faith only 
that pardon and justification are obtained : let him be accursed. 

" 15. Whoever shall affirm, that the faith of a renewed and justified man 
requires him to believe that he is certainly one of the predestinate : let him be 
accursed^ * 



468 DECREES AND OANOXS OF THE 

" 16. Whoever shall affirm, that he shall most surely, certainly, and in- 
fallibly enjo^/ the great gift of perseverance unto the end ; unless he hath 
learned the same by special revelation : let him be accursed. 

" 17. Whoever shall affirm, that the grace of justification belongs only to 
those who are predestinated to life ; and that all others, though they are called, 
are not called to receive grace, being by the ordinance of God predestinated to 
misery : let hun be accursed. 

"18. Wlioever shall affirm, that it is impossible even for a justified man, 
living in a state of grace, to keep the commandments of God : let him be ac- 
cursed. 

" 19. Whoever shall affirm, that the gospel contains no positive command 
but to believe : and that ail the rest are mdiiierent, being neither enjoined nor 
prohibited, but free : or that the ten commandments are not binding upon 
Christians : let him be accursed. 

" 20. W^hoever shall affirm, that a justified man, how perfect soever, is not 
bound to keep the comniandm.ents of God and the church, but only to believe ; 
as if the gospel were a naked absolute promise of eternal life, without the con- 
dition of keeping the commandments : let him be accursed. 

" 21. Whoever shall affirm, that Christ Jesus was given by God to men as 
a Redeemer to be trusted in, but not also as a Lav/giver to be obeyed : let him 
be accursed. 

" 22. Whoever shall affirm, that a justified man is able to persevere in 
righteousness received without the especial help of God ; or with that help he 
cannot : let him be accursed. 

" 23. Whoever shall affirm, that a man once justified cannot fall into sin 
any more, nor lose grace, and therefore that he who falls into sin never was 
truly justified ; or on the other hand, that he is able, all his life long, to avoid 
all sins, such as are venial, and that without a special privilege from God, 
such as the church believes was granted to the blessed Virgin : let him be ac- 
cursed. 

" 24. Whoever shall affirm, that justification received is not preserved, and 
even increased, in the sight of God, by good works ; but that works are only 
the fruits and evidences of justification received, and not the causes of its in- 
crease : let him be accursed. 

"25. Whoever shall affirm, that a righteous man sins in every good work, 
at least venially ; or, which is yet more intolerable, mortally ; and that he 
therefore deserves eternal punishment, and only for this reason is not con- 
demned, that God does not impute his works to condemnation : let him be 
accursed. 

" 26. Whoever shall affirm, that the righteous ought not to expect and 
hope for everlasting reward from God for their good works, which are 
wrought in God, through his mercy and the merits of Jesus Christ, if they per- 
severe to the end in well-doing and observance of the divine commandments : 
let him be accursed. 

"27. Whoever shall affirm, that there is no mortal sin except infidelity; or 
that grace once received cannot be lost by anv other sin than infid.elity, * 
however great and enormous ; let him be accursed. 

"28. Whoever shall affirm, that when grace is lost by sin, faith is always 
lost at the same time ; or that the faith which remains is not true faith, being 
confessedly inactive ; or that he who has faith without charity is not a Chris- 
tian : let him be accursed. 

" 29. Whoever shall affirm, that he who has fallen after baptism cannot 
by the grace of God rise again ; or that if he can, it is possible for him to re- 
cover his lost righteousness by faith only, without the sacrament of penance, 
which the holy Roman and universal church, instructed by Christ the Lord 
and his Apostles, has to this day professed, kept, and taught : let him be ac- 
cursed. 

" 30. Whoever shall affirm, that when the grace of justification is receiv- 
ed, the offence of the penitent sinner is so forgiven, and the sentence of eternal 
punishment reversed, that there remains no temporal punishment to be endu- 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 469 

red, before his entrance into the kingdom of heaven, either in this world, or ia 

the future state, in purgatory : let him be accursed. 

"3]. Whoever shall affirm, that a righteous man sins, if he performs good 
works with a view to the everlasting reward : let him be accursed. 

*' 32. Whoever shall affirm, that the good works of a justified man are in 
such sense the gifts of God, that they are not also his worthy merits ; or that 
he, being justified bv his good works, which are wrought by him through the 

trace of God, and tne merits of Jesus Christ, of whom he is a living member, 
oes not really deserve increase of grace, eternal life, the enjoyment of that 
eternal life if he dies in a state of grace, and even an increase of glory : let him 
be accursed. 

" 33. Whoever shall affirm, that the Catholic doctrine of justification, as sta- 
ted by the holy council in the present decree, does in any respect derogate from 
the glory of God and the merits of Jesus Christ our Lord ; or that the truth of 
our faith is not thereby clearly explained, and the glory of God and of Christ 
Jesus promoted : let him be accursed." 



The Sacraments. — " In order to complete the exposition of the whole- 
some doctrine of justification, published in the last session by the unanimous 
consent of the fathers, it hath been deemed proper to treat of the holy sacra- 
ments of the church, by which all true righteousness is at first imparted, then 
increased, and afterwards restored, if lost. For which cause the sacred, holy, 
cecumenical and general Council of Trent, lawfully assembled, &c. abiding by 
the doctrine of the sacred scriptures, the tradition of the apostles, and the uni- 
form consent of other councils, and of the fathers, hath resolved to frame and 
decree these following canons, in order to expel and extirpate the errors and 
heresies respecting the most holy sacraments, which have appeared in these 
times — partly the revival of heresies long ago condemned by our ancestors — 
partly new inventions — and have proved highly detrimental to the puriiy of 
the Catholic church and the salvation of souls. The remaining canons, ne- 
cessary to the completion of the work, will be pubHshed hereafter, by the help 
of God. 

" Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm that the sacraments of the new law were 
not all instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord, or that they are more or fewer 
than seven, namely, baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, penance, extreme unc- 
tion, orders, and matrimony, or that any of these is not truly and properly a 
sacrament : let him be accursed. 

" 2. Whoever shall affirm that the sacraments of the new lavv only differ 
from those of the old law, in that their ceremonies and external rites are dif- 
ferent : let him be accursed. 

" 3. Whoever shall affirm that these seven sacraments are in such sense 
equal, that no one of them is in any respect more honourable than another : 
let him be accursed. 

" 4. Whoever shall affirm that the sacraments of the new law are not ne- 
cessary to salvation, but superfluous ; or that men may obtain the grace of 
justification by faith only, without these sacraments although it is granted 
that they are not all necessary to every individual : let him be accursed. 

" 5. Whoever shall affirm that the sacraments were instituted solely for the 
purpose of strengthening our faith : let him be accursed. 

"6. Whoever shall affirm that the sacraments of the new law do not con- 
tain the grace which they signify; or that they do not confer that grace on 
those who •place no obstacle in its way; as if they were only the external 
signs of grace or righteousness received by faith, and marks of Christian pro- 
fession, whereby the faithful are distinguished from unbelievers : let him be 
accursed. 

"7. Whoever shall affirm that grace is not always conferred by these sacra- 
ments, and upon all persons, as far as God is concerned, \i they be lightly re- 
ceived ; but that it is only bestowed sometimes, and on some persons: let him,, 
be accursed. 

40 



470 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

" 8. Whoever shall affirm that grace is not conferred by these sacraments of 
the new law, by their own power ex opere operato ; but that faith in the 
divine promise is ail that is necessary to obtain grace : let him be accursed. 

" 9. Whoever shall affirm that a character, that is, a certain spintual and 
indelible mark, is not impressed on the soul by the three sacraments of ban- 
tism, confirmation, and orders ; for which reason they cannot be repeated : 
let him be accursed. 

" 10. Whoever shall affirm that all Christians have power to preach the 
word and administer all the sacraments : let him be accursed. 

*' 11. Whoever shall affirm that when ministers perform and confer a sacra- 
ment, it is not necessary that they should at least have the intention to do 
what the church does : let him be accursed. 

" 12. Whoever shall affirm that a minister who is in a state of mortal sin, 
does not perform or confer a sacrament, although he observes every thing 
that is essential to the performance and bestowment thereof: let him be 
accursed. 

" 13. Whoever shall affirm that the received and approved rites of the 
Catholic church, commonly used in the solemn administration of the sacra- 
ments, may be despised, or omitted, without sin. by the minister, at his 
pleasure, or that any pastor of a church may change them for others; let 
him be accursed." 



Baptism. — " Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm that the baptism of John had 
the same virtue as the baptism of Christ : let him be accursed. 

" 2. Whoever shall affirm that real and natural water is not necessary to 
baptis«i, and therefore that those words of our Lord Jesus Christ, ' Unless a 
man be born a^ain of water and the Holy Ghost,' John iii. 3, are to be figu^ 
ratively interpreted ; let him be accursed. 

" 3. Whoever shall affirm that the true doctrine of the sacrament of bap- 
tism is not in the Roman church, which is the mother and mistress of all 
churches : let him be accursed. 

" 4. Whoever shall affirm that baptism, when administered by heretics, in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, with the 
intention to do what the church does, is not true baptism : let him be 
accursed. 

*' 5. Whoever shall affirm that baptism is indifferent, that is, not necessary 
to salvation : let him be accursed. 

" 6. Whoever shall affirm that a baptized person cannot lose grace, even if 
he wishes to do so, how grievously soever he may sin, unless indeed he be- 
comes an infidel : let him be accursed. 

"7. Whoever shall affirm that the baptized are by their baptism brought 
under obligation to faith only, and not to the observance of the v/hole law of 
Christ : let him be accursed. 

" 8. Whoever shall affirm that the baptized are free from all the precepts of 
holy church, either written or delivered by tradition, so that they are not 
obliged to observe them, unless they will submit to them of their own accord : 
let him be accursed. 

" 9. Whoever shall affirm that men are so to call to mind the baptism they 
have received, as to understand that all vows made after baptism are null and 
void, by virtue of the promise made in that baptism ; as if by such vows any 
injury were done to the faith which they professed, or to their baptism itself; 
let him be accursed. 

" 10. Whoever shall affirm that all sins committed after baptism are for- 
given, or become venial, solely by the remembrance of that baptism, or faith 
therein : let him be accursed. 

"11. Whoever shall affirm that baptism, tmly and regularly administered, 
is to be repeated when a man is brought to repentance." who has denied the 
faith of Christ, after the manner of The infidels : let him be accursed. 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 471 

*' 12. Whoever shall affirm that no one ought to be baptized, but at the age 
at which Christ was baptized, or in the article of death : let him be accursed. 

" 13. Whoever shall affirm that children are not to be reckoned among the 
faithful by the reception of baptism, because they do not actually believe; 
and therefore that they are to be re-baptized when they come to years of 
discretion ; or that, since they cannot personally believe, it is better to omit 
their baptism, than that they should be baptized only in the faith of the 
church ; let him be accursed. 

" 14. Whoever shall affirm that when these baptized children grow up, 
they are to be asked whether they will confirm the promises made by their 
godfathers in their name at their baptism ; and that if they say they will not, 
they are to be left to their own choice, and not to be compelled in the mean 
time to lead a Christian life, or by any other punishment than exclusion 
from the eucharist and the other sacraments, until they repent : let him be 
accursed. 



Confirmation.—" Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm that the confirmation of 
the baptized is a trifling ceremony, and not a true and proper sacrament ; or. 
that formerly it was nothing more than a kind of catechizing; in which 
young persons explained the reasons of their faith before the church : let him 
be accursed. 

"2. Whoever shall affirm that they ofi^end the Holy Spirit, w^ho attribute 
any virtue to the said chrism of confirmation : let him be accursed. 

*' 3. Whoever shall affirm that the usual administrator of confirmation is 
not the bishop only, but any ordinary priest : let him be accursed." 



The Eucharist. — The sacred, holy, cecumenical, and general Council of 
Trent, lawfully assembled, &c., being convened under the special guidance 
and government of the Holy Spirit, in order to expound the true and ancient 
doctrine of faith and the sacraments, and apply a remedy to all heresies and 
other most grievous evils by which the church of God is now miserably vex- 
ed and rent in pieces — hath from the first particularly desired to root out 
utterly the tares of accursed errors and schisms, which the enemy has sown 
in these calamitous times, respecting the doctrine, use, and v/orship of the 
most holy eucharist ; which sacrament our Saviour hath left in the church 
as a symbol of the unity and love in which he hath willed all Christians to 
be joined and knit together. Therefore, the same most holy council strictly 
enjoins all the faithful in Christ, that they presume not hereafter to believe, 
teach, or preach otherwise respecting the most holy eucharist, than is explain- 
ed and defined in this present decree ; in which is delivered the genuine and 
wholesome doctrine of the venerable and divine sacrament of the eucharist, 
as the Catholic church, instructed by our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles, 
and taught by the Holy Spirit, who constantly leadeth her into truth, hath 
held, and will keep to the end of the world. 

I. The real Presence of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most holy Sacrament 
of the Eucharist. 
" In the first place, the holy council teacheth, and openly and plainly pro- 
fesseth, that our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and man, is truly, really, and 
substantially contained in the pure sacrament of the holy eucharist, after the 
consecration of the bread and wine, and under the species of those sensible 
objects. Neither is it to be regarded as contradictory, that our Saviour 
should always sit at the right hand of the Father in heaven according to his 
natural mode of existence, and yet be sacramentally present vv^iih us in his 
substance in many other places, according to that mode of existence which, 
though we cannot express it in words, we can nevertheless, when thought is 



472 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

illumined by faith, conceive to be possible with God, and ought most firmly 
to believe. — For all our ancestors who belonged to the true church of Christy 
did most plainly acknowledge, in discoursing on this most holy sacrament, 
that our Redeemer instituted the same when, after the benediction of the 
bread and wine, he testified in clear and express words, that he presented to 
his disciples his own body and his own blood. Which words, recorded by the 
evangelists, and repeated afterwards by blessed Paul, do evidently require' that 
appropriate and clear interpretation which has been given them by the 
fathers ; it is therefore a most heinous crime that they should be turned by 
certain contentious and wicked men into pretended and imaginary figures, to 
the denial of the truth of the flesh and blood of Christ ; contradicting therein 
the universal sense Ox^ the church, the pillar and ground of the truth, which 
detests those vain comments, devised by impious men under the influence of 
Satan, and thankfully acknowledges and holds in perpetual remembrance, 
this most excellent gift of Christ. 

II. Reason of the Institution of this most holy Sacrament. 
" Therefore, when our Saviour was about to depart from this world to the 
Father, he instituted this sacrament, in which be did as it were pour forth the 
riches of his divine love to men, and establish a memorial of his wonderful 
deeds : and he hath commanded us, in partaking thereof, to cherish his 
memory, and declare his death, till he shall come to judge the world. Now 
he intended this sacrament to be received as the spiritual food of souls, by 
which those who live by his life should be sustained and strengthened, as he 
said, ' he who eateth me, the same shall live by me ;' and as an antidote, to 
deliver us from daily faults, and preserve us from mortal sins. Moreover he 
designed it as a pledge of our future ^lory and everlasting bliss, and therefore 
as a symbol of that one body of which he is the head, and to which it is his 
will tnat we the members should be joined by the closest bonds of faiih, 
hope, and charity, that we might all speak the same thing, and no schisms be 
among us. 

III. Excellence of the m,ost holy Eucharist above the other Sacraments. 

"The most holy eucharist hath this in common with the other sacraments^ 
that it is a symbol of sacred things, a visible form of invisible grace. But 
herein is discovered its pecuhar excellence, that while the other sacraments 
then first possess the power of sanctifying when they are used by any one, 
the very author of sanctity is in the eucharist before it is used : for the apos- 
tles had not yet received the eucharist from the hand of the Lord, when he 
afl&rmed that what he was presenting to them was really his body. And 
this faith has always remained in the church of God, that immediately after 
the consecration, the true body of our Lord, and his true blood, together 
with his soul and divinity, do exist under the species of the bread and wine ; 
his body under the species of bread, and his blood under the species of wine, 
by virtue of the words of consecration ; his body also under the species of 
wine, and his blood under the species of bread, and his soul under each spe- 
cies, through that natural connexion and concomitance by which all thd 
parts of Christ our Lord, who has risen from the dead, no more to die, are 
closely connected together; and his divinity, through the wonderful and 
hypostaiical union thereof with his body and soul. Wherefore it is most 
certain that all is contained under either species, and under both ; for Christ, 
whole and entire, exists under the species of bread, and in every p article 
thereof, and under the species of wine, and in all its parts. 

IV. Transubstantiation* 
** Since therefore Christ our Redeenier affirmed, that it was truly his bod v 
which was presented under the species of br^ad, the church of God hath 
always held, and this holy council doth now renew the d«3claration, that hj 
the consecration of the bread and wine, the whole substance of the bread is 
converted into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord, and the whole 



COUNCIL OF TREMT. 473 

substance of the wine into the substance of his blood ; which convemon is 
by the holy Catholic church fitly and properly called transubstantiation. 

V. Warship and Veneration to he rendered to this most holy Sacrament. 

" There is, therefore, no room to doubt, that all the faithful in Christ are 
bound to venerate this most holy sacrament, and to render thereto the wor- 
ship of latriay which is due to the true God, latriae cultum, qui vero Deo debe- 
tur, according to the custom always observed in the Cathohc church. Nei- 
ther is it to be less adored, because it was instituted by Christ our Lord, as 
has been stated ; for we believe him who is present therein to be the same 
God of whom the Eternal Father said, when he brought him into the world, 
* And let all the angels of God adore him,' Heb. i. 6 ; before whom the Magi 
prostrated themselveSj adoring; and whom., as scripture testifies, the apostles 
worshipped in Galilee. 

"The holy council further declares, that the custom of annually celebra- 
ting this pre-eminent and adorable sacrament with peculiar veneration and 
solemnity, on an appointed festal day, carrying it reverently and honourably 
in procession through the streets and public places, was piously and reli- 
giously introduced into the church of God. For it is most proper that certain 
sacred days should be fixed, on which all Christians may in a special man- 
ner testify with what grateful remembrance they regard their common Lord 
and Redeemer, for a benefit so inefiable and divine, w^herein is represented 
the victory and triumph of his death. Thus also it is fit that all-conquering 
truth should display its triumph over heresies and lies, that when its enemies 
witness so great splendour, and such joy in the whole church, they may be 
disheartened, and as it were, smitten with pining sickness, or else, struck 
with shame and confusion, may betimes repent. 

VI. Preserving the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist^ and carrying it to the 

Sicli'. 

"The custom of preserving the holy eucharistin the sacristy is so ancient, 
that it was acknowledged even in the age of the council of Nice. Moreover, 
the practice of carrying the same holy eucharist to the sick, and carefully 
preserving it for that purpose in churches, is not only perfectly agreeable to 
the strictest equity and reason, but has also been enjoined by many councils, 
and sanctioned by the long-standing observance of the Catholic church. 
Therefore, this holy council decrees, that this very salutary and necessary 
custom be retained. 

VII. Preparation to be used in order to Receive the Holy Eucharist worthily, 
"If it is not fitting to engage in any sacred duty but in a holy manner, the 

Christian will clearly perceive that the surpassing purity and divinity of this 
heavenly sacrament require him the more diligently to take heed that he do 
not attempt to receive it without great reverence and sanctity, especially when 
those fearful words of the apostle are considered, ' He that eateth and drink- 
eth unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the 
body of the Lord,' 1 Cor. xi. 29. Wherefore, he who wishes to communicate 
must be reminded of the precept, 'Let a man prove himself,' 1 Cor. xi. 28. 
Now the custom of the church declares this preparation to be necessary — 
that no one who is conscious of mortal sin, however contrite he may thmk 
himself to be, should venture to receive the holy eucharist without previous 
sacramental confession. Which custom this holy council decrees to be 
strictly observed by all Christians, and even by the priests, whose office it is 
to administer the sacrament, unless there happens to be no confessor at hand. 
If, therefore, through necessity, the priest solemnizes the sacrament without 
previous confession, let him confess as soon as possible. 

VIII. Use of this admirable Sacrament. 
"As regards the use of this holy sacrament, our fathers have rightly and 
wisely distinguished three ways of receiving it. They have taught that some 
40* 



474 DECREBS AN© CANONS OF THE 

receive it only sacramentally, as sinners. Others receive it only spiritually, 
namely, those who eating with desire the heavenly bread presented to them, 
enjoy its fruit and use, through hvely faith, working by charity. A third 
class receive it both sacramentally ana spiritually ; these are those who so 
examine and prepare themselves beforehand, that they come to this divine 
table, adorned with the nuptial garment. Now it hath been the custom of 
the church of God, that in receiving this sacrament, the laity should take the 
communion from the priests, and the officiating priests administer to themselves: 
which custom, transmitted by apostolic tradition, rightfully deserves to be re- 
tained. Lastly, the holy council doth with paternal affection admonish, exhort, 
beg, and entreat, by the tender mercies of our God, all who bear the Christian 
name, that they would at length unite and agree, in this sign of unity, this bond 
of charily, this symbol of concord ; and that mindful of the exceeding majesty 
and wonderful love of Jesus Christ our Lord, who gave his precious soul as the 
price of our salvation, and his flesh to us to eat, they would believe in those sacred 
mysteries of his body and blood, regard them with constant and firm faith, devo- 
tion, piety, and reverence, and frequently receive that supersubstant!.iil bread, 
which will be the true life of their souh, preserve the health of the mind, and 
so strengthen them, that they will be able lo pursue the course of this mise- 
rable pilgrimage till they amve at the heavenly country, and eat without dis- 
guise that angel's food which they now receive under sacred veils." 

" But since it is not sufficient to state truth, unless errors are detected and 
exposed, the holy council has thotight fit to subjoin the following canons, that 
the Catholic doctrine being now declared, all persons may understand what 
heresies they ought to shun and avoid. 

" Cano7i 1. Whoever shall deny, that in the most holy sacrament of the 
eucharist there are truly, really, and substantially contamed the body and 
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, together with his soul and di^dnity, and con- 
sequently Christ entire ; but shall affirm that he is present therein only in a 
sign or figure, or by his power: let him be accursed. 

" 2. Whoever shall affirm, that in the most holy sacrament of the eucharist 
there remains the substance of the bread and vnne, together with the body 
and blood of our Lord Jesu? Christ ; and shall deny that wonderful and pecu- 
liar conversion of the whole substance of the bread into his body, and of the 
whole substance of the wine into his blood, the species only of bread and 
wine remaining, which conversion the CathoUc church most fitly terms traii- 
substantiation : let him be accursed. 

"3. Whoever shall deny that Christ entire is contained in the venerable 
sacrament of the eucharist, under such s:)ecie3, and under every part of each 
species when they are separated : let him be accursed. 

"4. Whoever shall affirm, that the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Ch ist 
are not present in the admirable eucharist, as s3on as the consecration is 
performed, but only as it is used and received, and neither before nor after ; 
and that the true body of our Lord does not remain in the hosts or con- 
secrated morcels, which ai*e reserved or left after communion: let him be 
accursed. 

" 5. Whoever shall affirm, that remission of sins is the chief fruit of the 
most holy eucharist, or that other effects are not produced thereby : let him 
be accursed. 

"6. Whoever shall affirm, that Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is 
not to be adored in the holy eucharist with the external signs of that worship 
which is due to God ; and therefore that the eucharist is not to be honoured 
>Yith extraordinary festive celebration, nor solemnly carried about in proces- 
sions, according to the laudable and universal rites and customs of holy 
church, nor publicly presented to the people for their adoration ; and that 
those who worship the same are idolaters : let him be accursed. 

" 7. Whoever shall affirm that it is not lawful to preserve the holy eucharist 
in the sacristy, but that immediately after consecration it must of necessity 
be distributed to those who are present ; or that it is not lawful to carry it in 
procession to the sick : let him be accursed. 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 475 

" 8. Whoever shall aflBrm that Christ as exhibited in the eucharist is eaten 
in a spiritual manner only, and not also sacramentally and really : let him be 
accursed. 

" 9. Whoever shall deny that all and every one of the faithful in Christ, of 
both sexes, are bound to communicate every year, at least at Easter, accord- 
ing to the injunction of holy mother church : let him be accursed. 

" 10. Whoever shall affirm, that it is not lawful for the officiating priest to 
administer the communion to himself; let him be accursed. 

"11. Whoever shall affirm, that faith only is a sufficient preparation for the 
reception of the most holy sacrament of the eucharist : let him be accursed. 
And lest so great a sacrament should be taken unworthily, and therefore to 
death and condemnation, the said holy council doth decree and declare, that 
previous sacramental confession is absolutely necessary, if a confessor is at 
hand, for those who are conscious of the guilt of mortal sin, however con- 
trite they may think themselves to be. Whoever shall presume to teach, 
preach, or obstinately assert the contrary, or to maintain opposite opinions in 
public disputation : let him ipso facto be excommunicated." 



Penance. — " Although in the decree concerning justification many obser- 
vations on the sacrament of penance were necessarily introduced, on account 
of the connexion of the subjects : nevertheless, such is the multitude and 
variety of errors promulgated in our times on that point, that it will greatly 
tend to the p bUc welfare to give a more exact and full explanation thereof, 
by which, through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, all errors may be 
exposed and eradicated, and the Catholic truth rendered more clear and 
illustrious; which explanation the sacred, holy, oecumenical, and universal 
Council of Trent, lawfully assembled, &c. doth now propound to all Chris- 
tians, to be by them ever preserved. 

I. Necessity and Institution of the Sacrament of Penance. 

" If, in all the regenerate, there were such gratitude to God, that they 
always kept the righteousness received by his goodness and grace in baptism, 
there would have been no need to institute another sacrament for the remis- 
sion of sins, besides baptism. But since God, who is rich in mercy, knoweth 
our frame, he haih provided a saving remedy for those who yield themselves 
again to the slavery of sin and the power of the devil ; namely, the sacra- 
ment of penance, whereby the benefits of the death of Christ are applied to 
those who sin after baptism. Now, in order to obtain grace and righteous- 
ness, penance was always necessary for all men who had defiled themselves 
with mortal sin, even for those who sought to be washed in the sacrament of 
baptism, that, renouncing and amending their perverseness, they might regard 
so great offences asainst God with the utmost abhorrence and hatred, and pious 
grief of mind. Whence the prophet saith, ' Be converted, and do penance 
for all your iniquities, and iniquity shall not be your ruin.' Ezek. xviii. 30. 
The Lord also said, 'Except you do penance, you shall all likewise perish.' 
Luke xiii. 5. And Peter, the prince of the apostles, recommending penance 
to those sinners who were about to be initiated by baptism, said, ' Do penance, 
and be baptized every one of you.' Acts ii. 38. Yet penance was not a 
sacrament before the coming of Christ, nor since his coming is it a sac- 
rament to any before baptism. But the Lord specially instituted the sac- 
rament of penance, when, after his resurrection, he breathed on his disciples, 
saying, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost; whose sins you shall forgive, they 
are forgiven them ; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.' 
John XX. 22, 23. By that remarkable action, and by those express words, 
as the fathers have by universal consent always understood the same, 
the power of forgiving and retaining sins, in order to reconcile the faith- 
ful who have sinned after baptism, Was communicated to the apostles 



476 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

and their lawful successors; and the CathoKc church hath with good reason 
rejected and condemned as heretics the Novatians, who obstinately deny the 
power of forgiving. Wherefore this holy synod, appro vmg and receiving the 
above most evident sense of those words of our Lord, condemns the vain 
interpretations of those persons who falsely restrict them to the power of 
preaching the word of God and publishing the gospel of Christ, ui opposition 
to the institution of this sacrament. 

II. Difference between the Sacrament of Penance and the Sacrament of 

Baptism. 
" But this sacrament is known to differ from baptism in many respects. 
For besides that the matter and form, in which the essence of a sacrament 
consists, are exceedingly different, it is very plain that the minister of baptism 
cannot be a judge, since the church exercises judgment only on those who 
have first entered into her by the gate of baptism. ' For what have I to do,' 
saith the apostle, 'to judge them who are without?' 1 Cor. v. 12. But it is 
otherwise with those who are of the household of faith, w^hom Christ the 
Lord hath made members of his body in the laver of baptism. For if these 
afterwards defile themselves by any transgression, it is not his wdll that they 
should be cleansed by a repetition of baptism, which is on no account lawful 
in the Catholic church, but they should be placed as offenders before the tri- 
bunal of penance, that they may be absolved by the sentence of the priests, 
not once only, but as often as they penitently flee thereto, confessing their 
sins. The fruit of baptism is also different from the fruit of penance : for in 
baptism we put on Christ and are made new creatures in him, obtaining the 
full and entire remission of all our sins ; but divine justice requires that we 
should not be able again to attain this new and perfect state, through the 
sacrament of penance, without many tears and ^eat efibrts, so that penance 
was deservedly called by the holy fathers a kind of laborious baptism. And 
the sacrament of penance is as necessary to salvation for those who have 
sinned after baptism, as baptism itself for the unregenerate 

in. Parts and Fruit of this Sacrament. 
"The holy council farther teaches, that the form of the sacrament of 
penance, in which its power chiefly lies, resides in the words of the minister, 
* I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
and of the Holy Ghost.' To which words certain prayers are added, by_ a 
laudable custom of holy church : yet they do not belong to the essence of its 
form, nor are they necessary to tiie administration of the sacrament itself. 
Moreover, the acts of the penitent, namely, contrition, confession, and satis- 
faction, are the matter, as it were, of this sacrament ; which inasmuch as 
they are required by divine appointment in order to the completeness of the 
sacrament, and the full and perfect remission of sins, are for this reason call- 
ed the parts of penance. And assuredly the substance and effect of this 
sacrament, as far as relates to its power and efficacy, is reconcihation with 
God ; which sometimes produces in pious souls, who receive this sacrament 
in a devotional manner, tranquillity and peace of conscience, accompanied 
with strong spiritual consolation. In making these statements respecting the 
parts and effects of this sacrament, the holy council condemns the sentiments 
of those persons who contend that the terrors with which the conscience is 
smitten, and faith, are the parts of penance. 

IV. Contrition. 
"Contrition, which holds the first place in the above mentioned acts of the 
penitent, is the sorrow and detestation which the mind feels for past sin, with 
a purpose of sinning no more. Now this emotion of contrition was always 
necessary in order to obtain the pardon of sins ; and when a man has sinned 
after baptism, it prepares him for the remission of sin, if joined with confi- 
dence in the mercy of God, and an earnest desire of performing whatever is 
necessary to the' proper reception of the sacramea*. Therefore the holy 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 477 

council declares, that this contrition includes not only the cessation from sin, 
and the purpose of beginning a new life, but also hatred of former trans- 
gression, according as it is written, ' Cast away from you all your transgres- 
sions by which you have transgressed, and make to yourselves a new heart 
and a new spirit.' Ezek. xviii. 31. And certainly, whoever considers those 
cries of the saints, 'To thee only have I sinned, and have, done evil before 
thee,' Psalm U. 6. — 'I have laboured in my groanings, every night I will wash 
my bed,' Psalm vi. 7. — ' I will recount to the Lord my years, in the bitter- 
ness of my soul,' Isa. xxxviii. 15 : and others of the same kind, will easily 
perceive that they spring from vehement hatred of the past life, and a sirong 
abhorrence of sin. The council lurther teaches, that although it may some- 
times happen that this contrition is perfect in charity, and reconciles a man 
to God before the sacrament of penance is actually received, nevertheless 
the reconciliation is not to be ascribed to contrition without the desire of the 
sacrament, which was in fact included in it. The council also declares, that 
that imperfect contrition which is called attrition, commonly arising from a 
turpitude of sin, and a fear of hell and punishment, the intention of continu- 
ing in sin with the hope of receiving pardon at last being disavowed, not 
only does not make a man a hypocrite ^nd a greater sinner, but is really a 
gift of God. and an impulse of the Holy Spirit ; not that the Spirit does as 
yet dwell in the soul, but merely excites the penitent, who, thus aided, pre- 
pares his way to righteousness. And although it cannot of itself conduct the 
sinner to justification, without the sacrament of penance, yet it disposes him 
to seek the grace of God in the sacrament of penrnice : for the Ninevites, 
being salutarily impressed with this fear by the terror-inspiring preaching of 
Jonan, did penance and sought mercy of the Lord. Therefore Catholic 
writers have been basely calumniated, as if they had affirmed that the sacra- 
ment of penance confers grace on those who receive it, without good disposi- 
tions ; which sentiment the church of God hath never taught nor held. Some 
also falsely teach that contrition is extorted and forced, not free and voluntary. 

V. Confession. 
"The universal church has always understood that a full confession of sins 
was instituted by the Lord as a part of the sacrament of penance, now ex- 
plained, and that it is necessary, by divine appointment, for all who sin after 
baptism : because our Lord Jesus Christ, when he was about to ascend from 
earth to heaven, left his, priests in his place, as presidents and judges, to whom 
all mortal offences into which the faithful might fall should be submitted, 
that they might pronounce sentence of remission or retention of sins, by the 
power of the keys. For it is plain that the priests cannot sustain the office of 
judge, if the cause be unknown to them, nor inflict equitable punishments if 
sins are only confessed in general, and not minutely and individually de- 
scribed. For this reason it follows that penitents are bound to rehearse in 
confession all mortal sins, of which, after diligent examination of themselves, 
they are conscious, even though they be of 3ie most secret kind, and only 
committed against the two last precepts of the decalogue. Which some- 
times do more grievously wound souls, and are more perilous than those 
which are open and manifest. For venial offences, by which we are not ex- 
cluded from the grace of God, and into which we so frequently fall, may be 
concealed without fault, and expiated in many other ways, although, as the 
pious custom of many demonstrates, they may be mentioned in confession 
very properly and usefully, and without any presumption. But seeing that all 
mortal sins, even of thought, make men children of wrath and enemies of 
God, it is necessary to seek from him pardon of every one of them, with 
open and humble confession. Therefore when the faithful in Christ labour 
to confess every sin that occurs to their memory, without doubt they place all 
before the divine mercy, that they may be pardoned. Those who do other- 
wise, and knowingly conceal any sins, present nothing to the divine good- 
ness, to be forgiven by the priest : for if the sick man is ashamed to show his 
wound to the surgeon, that cannot be cured which is unknown. Moreover, 



478 DECREES AND CANONS OF TUE 

it follows that even those circumstances which alter the species of sin are to 
be explained in confession, since otherwise the penitents cannot fially confess 
their sins, nor the judges know them ; and it becomes impossible to form a 
right estimate of the heinousness of the offence, or inflict a suitable punish- 
ment. Whence it is very unreasonable to teach that those circumstances are 
the inventions of idle men, or that it is sufficient to confess one circumstance 
only, as for instance, that we have sinned against a brother. And it is truly 
impious to assert that such confession as is here enjoined is impossible, or to 
call it a torture of conscience : for it is plain that nothing else is required by 
the church of penitents, than that when they have carefully examined them- 
selves, and explored all the corners and recesses of their consciences, they 
should confess those sins in the commission of which they remember to have 
mortally offended their Lord and God ; but that other offences, which are not 
brought to mind in this diligent inquiry, are understood to be generally 
included in the same confession : concerning which offences we sincerely 
adopt the language of the prophet, ' From secret ones cleanse me, O Lord,* 
Psalm xix. 13. Besides, the difficulty of such confession as this, and the 
shame of discovering our offences, which seem hard to be overcome, are 
alleviated by the many and great advantages and consolations which are 
unquestionably bestowed in absolution on those who worthily receive the 
sacrament. And now with regard to the practice of confessing secretly to 
the priest alone : although Christ has not prohibited any one from publicly 
confessing his crimes, as a punishment for bis offences, and for his own 
humiUation, as well as for an example to others, and for the edification of the 
offended church ; nevertheless, such public confession, especially of secret 
sins, is not enjoined by any divine command, nor has it been expressly pro- 
vided for by any human law. Therefore, seeing that sacramental confession, 
as it has been practised by holy church from the beginning, and is still prac- 
tised, was at all times recommended by the manifest and unanimous consent 
of the hohest and most ancient fathers, the groundless calumny of those 
persons is clearly refuted, w^ho presume to teach that such confession is 
opposed to divine commands, and that it is a human invention, first intro- 
duced by the council of Lateran. Whereas the church assembled in the 
council of Lateran did not decree that Christians should confess, which was 
well known to be necessary, and instituted by divine command, but only 
that the duty of confession should be fulfilled at least once a year by all 
persons who have attained to years of discretion. For which reason the 
salutary custom of confessing at the sacred and most acceptable season of 
Lent, has been observed by the whole church with very great benefit to the 
souls of believers; which custom this holy council approves and adopts, as 
pious and deserving to be retained. 

VT. The Minister of this Sacrament, and of Absolution. 
"Respecting the minister of this sacrament, the holy council declares that 
all those opinions are false and utterly opposed to the truth of the gospel, 
which mischievously extend the power of the keys to all men whatsoever, 
besides bishops and priests ; supposing that those words of our Lord, ' What- 
soever you shall bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatso- 
ever you shall loose upon earth shall be loosed al?o in heaven,' Mat. xviii. 18, 
and ' Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins you 
shall retain, they are retained,' John xx. 23, were spoken indifferently and 
promiscuously to all believers in Christ, to the denial of the institution of this 
sacrament, so that every one has the power of forgiving sins, public sins by 
reproo^, if the offender shall acquiesce therein, and secret sins by voluntary 
confession, to whomsoever made. The council further teaches, that even 
tho«e priests who are living in mortal sin exercise the function of forgiving 
sins, as the ministers of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit conferrea 
upon them in ordination ; and that those who contend that wicked priests 
have not this power hold very erroneous sentiments. A^ain ; though tho 
priest's absolution is the dispensation of a benefit which belongs to another, 



COUNCIL OF TRENT 479 

yet it is not to be considered as merely a ministry, whether to publish the 
gospel or to declare the remission of sins, but as of the nature of a judicial 
act, in which sentence is pronounced by him as a judge: and therefore the 
penitent ought not to flatter himself on account of nis faith, so as that, 
though he should have no contrition, and though the priest should not intend 
to act seriously and really to absolve him, he should suppose that he is never- 
theless truly absolved before God, on the ground of his faith only. For faith 
without penance cannot procure remission of sins ; nor would any one, unless 
extremely negligent of his own salvation, be satisfied with a priest who ab- 
solved him jestingly, but would carefully seek for one who should be serious 
in the performance of his office. 

VII. Reservation of Cases. 
"Since therefore the nature and reason of a judicial process require that 
sentence should be pronounced only on those who are inferior to the judge ; 
the church of God has always been persuaded, and this council establishes it 
as a certain truth, that absolution can be of no value when it is bestowed on 
one over whom the priest has not ordinary or delegated jurisdiction. Now, 
our venerable ancestors judged it greatly to the advancement of Christian 
discipline, that certain heavy and heinous offences should not receive absolu- 
tion from any priests but those of the highest rank. Whence the Supreme 
Pontiffs, deservedly exercising the sovereign power which is given them over 
the universal church, have been accustomed to reserve to their own decision 
the more weighty causes and crimes. Nor, seeing that in the divine govera- 
ment all things are well ordered, is it to be questioned that similarpower, 
given for edification, not for destruction, belongs to all bishops in their 
respective dioceses, according to ihe authority iavested in them over inferior 
priests, especially with regard to those ofiences to which the censure of ex- 
communication is annexed. Moreover, it is perfectly consistent with the 
method of the divine administration, that this reservation of sins should be 
valid, not only in the external government of the church, but also before 
God. Nevertheless, lest for this cause any should perish, the church of God 
has always piously taken care that there should be no reservation in the arti- 
cle of death, and therefore that in that case all priests may absolve such 
penitents as they think proper, from all sins and censures whatsoever; only, 
as priests have no power in reserved cases, except in the article of death, it 
becomes them to endeavour to persuade penitents to repair to their superior 
and lawful judges for the benefit of absolution. 

VIII. Necessity and Fruit of Satisfaction. 
"It remains to treat of satisfaction, which, of all the parts of penance, was 
ever particularly recommended to Christian people by our fathers, and has in 
our days been chiefly impugned, and that with great pretences to piety, by 
men who have indeed the appearance of godliness, but deny the power there- 
of. The holy council declares, that the notion that offence is never forgiven 
by the Lord, without a remission of the whole punishment, is altogether 
false and contrary to the word of God. For, besides the evidence of divine 
tradition, there are many plain and striking examples in holy writ, by which 
this error is clearly refuted. And truly the justice of God seems reasonably 
to require that those who have sinned through ignorance before baptism 
should be received into a state of grace in a different manner from those who, 
having been once freed from the slavery of sin and the devil, and having 
received the whole gift of the Holy Spirit, dread not knowingly to violate the 
temple of God, and grieve the Holy Ghost. And it is agreeable to the divine 
goodness that our sins should not be forgiven without satisfaction, lest, taking 
occasion therefrom, we should think lightly of them, treat the Holy Spirit in 
an injurious and contumelious manner, fall into more grievous offences, and 
treasure up for ourselves wrath against the day of wrath. For doubtless these 
ratisfactory penances tend powerfully to preserve and restrain penitents from 
sin, and render them more cauiioi-is and watchful in future ; they cure also the 



480 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

remains of sin, and remove vicious habits, contracted by evil living, substitu- 
.ting for them the opposite practices of virtue. Nor has the church of God 
ever devised a more efficacious method of averting the punishment impend- 
ing ov^r us from the Divine Being, than a frequent performance of these 
works of penance, with a genuine sorrow of heart. In addition to this, when 
in making satisfaction we suffer for our sins, we are conformed to Christ 
Jesus, who has satisfied for our ofiences, and from whom is all our suffi- 
ciency ; receiving thence also the sure pledge that if we suffer with him we 
shall be glorified together. Nevertheless, this our satisfaction which we make 
for our ofiences, is not otherwise to be regarded than as being through Christ 
Jesus ; for we, who of ourselves, as of ourselves, can do nothing, can do all things 
through his co-operation who strengtheneth us : so that man has nothing to 
glory in, but all our glorying is in Christ, in whom we live, in whom we me- 
rit, in whom we make satisfaction, bringing forth fruits worthy of penance, 
which from him derive their value, by him are offered to the Father, and 
through him are accepted by the Father. Therefore the priests of the Lord, 
following the sugsrestion of wisdom and prudence, are bound to enjoin salu- 
tary andsuitable satisfaction, according to the nature of the offence and the 
capability of the offender ; lest, if they connive at sin and deal too indul- 
gently with penitents, by adjudging small penalties to heinous crimes, they 
become partakers of other men's transgressions. But let them take special 
care that the satisfaction which they impose shall not only tend to the pre- 
servation of a new life and the cure of human infirmity, but shall also act as 
a punishment and affliction for past sins ; for, as the ancient fathers beheved 
and taught, the power of the keys was not given to loose only, but also to 
bind. Yet they did not imagine that for this reason the sacrament of pen- 
ance is a tribunal of anger and punishment, nor has any Catholic ever sup- 
posed that the efficacy of the merit and satisfaction of our Lord Jesus Christ 
IS obscured or in the least diminished by these our works of satisfaction : 
although this has been maintained by recent innovators, who teach that a 
new life is the best penance, and thus take away all the efficacy and use of 
satisfaction. 

IX. Works of Satisfaction, 

"The council further teaches, that such is the abundance of the divine 
bounty, that we are able to make satisfaction to God the Father through 
Christ Jesus, not only by punishments voluntarily endured by us as chas- 
tisements for sin, or imposed at the pleasure of the priest according to the 
degree of the offence, but also, and this is an amazing proof of love, by tem- 
poral pains inflicted by God himself, and by us patiently borne. 

The council also delivers the following canons, to be inviolably observed, 
and condemns and anathematizes for ever those who assert the contrary. 

" Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm that penance, as used in the Catholic 
church, is not truly and properly a sacrament, instituted by Christ our Lord, 
for the benefit of the faithful, to reconcile them to God, as often as they shall 
fall into sin after baptism: let him be accursed. 

"2. Whoever, confounding the sacraments, shall affirm that baptism itself 
is a penance, as if those two sacraments were not distinct, and penance were 
not rightly called a 'second plank after shipwreck:' let him be accursed. 

" 3. Whoever shall affirm that the words of the Lord our Saviour, ' Receive 
ye the Holy Ghost ; whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them, and 
whose sins you shall retain, they are retained ;' are not to be understood of 
the povyer of forgiving and retaining sins in the sacrament of penance, as the 
Catholic church has always from the very first understood them; but shall 
restrict them to the authority of preaching the gospel, in opposition to the 
institution of this sacrament : let him be accursed. 
^ " 4. Whoever shall deny, that in order to the full and perfect forgiveness of 
smo, three acts are required of the penitent, constituting as it were the matter 
of the sacrament of penance, namely, contrition, confession, and satisfaction, 
which are called the three parts of psnaace ; or shall affirm that there are 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 481 

only two parts oi penance, namely, terrors wherewith the conscience is 
smitten by the sense of sin, and faith, produced by the gospel, or by absolu- 
tion, whereby the person believes that his sins are forgiven him through 
Christ : let him be accursed. 

" 5. Whoever shall affirm that that contrition which is produced by exami- 
nation, enumeration, and hatred of sins, and in the exercise of which the peni- 
tent recounts his years in the bitterness of his soul, pondering the weight, 
multitude, and baseness of his offences, the loss of eternal happiness, and the 
desert of eternal condemnation, with a resolution to lead a better life — that 
such contrition is not sincere and useful sorrow, and does not prepare for 
grace, but makes a man a hypocrite and a greater sinner, and that it is in fact 
a forced sorrow, and not free and voluntary : let him be accursed. 

" 6. Whoever shall deny that sacramental confession was instituted by divine 
command, or that it is necessary to salvation ; or shall affirm that the prac- 
tice of secretly confessing to the priest alone, as it has been ever observed 
from the beginning by the Catholic church, and is still observed, is foreign to 
the institution and command of Christ, and is a human invention : let hhn 
be accursed. 

" 7. Whoever shall affirm, that in order to obtain forgiveness of sins in the 
sacrament of penance, it is not by divine command necessary to confess all 
and every mortal sin which occurs to the memory after due and diligent 
premeditation — including secret offences, and those which have been commit- 
ted against the two last precepts of the decalogue, and those circumstances 
which change the species of sin ; but that such confession is only useful for 
the instruction and consolation of the penitent, and was formerly observed 
merely as a canonical satisfaction imposed upon him ; or shall affirm that 
those who labour to confess all their sins wish to leave nothing to be pardon- 
ed by the divine mercy ; or, finally, that it is not lawful to confess venial sins : 
let him be accursed. 

" 8.- Whoever shall affirm that the confession of every sin, according to 
the custom of the church, is impossible, and merely a human tradition, which 
the pious should reject ; or that all Christians, of both sexes, are not bound 
to observe the same once a year, according to the constitution of the great 
Council of Lateran ; and therefore, that the faithful in Christ are to be per- 
suaded not to confess in Lent :. let him be accursed. 

"9. Whoever shall affirm that the priest's sacramental absolution is not a 
judicial act, but only a ministry, to pronounce and declare that the sins of the 
party confessing are forgiven, so that he believes himself to be absolved, even 
though the priest should not absolve seriously, but in jest ; or shall affirm that 
the confession of the penitent is not necessary in order to obtain absolution 
from the priest ; let him be accursed. 

" 10. Whoever shall affirm that priests living in mortal sin have not the 
power of binding and loosing; or that priests are not the only ministers of 
absolution, but that it was said to all believers, 'Whatsoever you shall bind 
upon earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose 
upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven ;' and ' whose sms you shall for- 
give, they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained ;' 
by virtue of which words any one may absolve from sin, from pubHc sin by 
piiblic reproof, if the offender shall acquiesce therein, and from private sins by 
voluntary confession : let him be accursed. 

" 11. Whoever shall affirm that bishops have not the power of reserving to 
themselves certain cases, excepting such as relate to the external poHty of 
the church, and therefore that the reservation of cases does not hinder priests 
from absolving, even in such reserved cases : let him be accursed. 

"12. Whoever shall affirm, that the entire punishment is always remitted 
by God, together with the fault, and therefore that penitents need no other 
satisfaction than faith, whereby they apprehend Christ, who has made satis- 
faction for them : let him be accursed. 

*' 13. Whoever shall affirm, that we can by no means make satisfaction to 
God for our sins, through the merits of Christ, as far as the temporal penalty 
41 



482 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

is concerned, either by punishments inflicted on us by him, and patiently 
borne, or enjoined by the priest, though not undertaken of our own accord, 
such as fastings, prayers, abiis, or other works of piety ; and tiierefore that 
the best penance is nothing more than a new hfe : let him be accursed. 

" 14. Whoever shall affirm, that the satisfactions by which penitents 
redeem themselves from sin through Christ Jesus, are no part of the service 
of God, but, on the contrary, human traditions, which obscure the doctrine of 
grace, and the true worship of God, and the benefits of the death of Christ : 
let him be accursed. 

" 15. Whoever shall affirm, that the keys are given to the church to loose 
only, and not also to bind ; and that therefore when priests impose punishments 
on those who confess, they act in opposition to the design of the keys, and 
against the institution of Christ; and that to maintain, that if the power of 
the keys be deiiied, both temporal and eternal punishment remain to be en- 
dured, is to advance a mere fiction : let him be accursed." 



Extreme Unction. — " It hath seemed good to the holy council to subjoin 
to the preceding exposition of the doctrine of penance what now follows con- 
cerning the sacrament of extreme unction, which was regarded by the fathers 
as the ^consummating act, not of penance only, but of the whole Christian 
life, which ought to be a perpetual penance. In the first place, therefore, 
with regard to its institution, the council declares and teaches, that as our 
most merciful Redeemer, who intended that his servants should be provided 
at all times with salutary remedies against every dart of their enemies, has in 
the other sacraments prepared powerful helps, by which Christians may be 
safely preserved during life, from all great spiritual evils — so he has fortified 
the close of their existence with the sacrament of extreme unction, as with a 
most secure defence. For though our adversary seeks and takes occasion, 
during our whole life, to devour our souls, in v/hatever manner he may ; there 
is no period in which he so vigorously exerts all the strength of his subtlety 
to accomplish our utter ruin, and disturb, if possible, our confidence in the di- 
vine mercy, as when he sees that w^e are approaching the termination of our 
course. 

I. Institution of the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. 
"This sacred unction of the sick was instituted as a true and proper sacra- 
ment of the New Testament by Christ Jesus our Lord; being first intimated 
by Mark, vi. 13, and afterwards recommended and published to the faith- 
ful by James the apostle, brother of our Lord. 'Is any man,' saith he, 
' sick among you 7 Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them 
pray over him, anointing him w^ith oil in the name of the Lord ; and the 
prayer of faith shall save the sick man; and the Lord shall raise him up ; 
and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him.' James v. 14, 15. In which 
words, as the church has learned by apostolical tradition, handed down from 
age to age, he teaches the matter, form, proper minister, and efi:ect of this 
salutary sacrament. For the church understands the matter of the sacra- 
ment to be the oil, blessed by the bishop ; the unction most fitly representing 
the grace of the Holy Spirit, wherewith the soul of the sick man is invisibly 
anointed. The form is contained in the words of administration. 

II. The effect of this Sacrament. 
" The power and effect of this sacrament are explained in the words — * and 
the prayer of faith shall save the sick man ; and the Lord shall raise him up ; 
and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him.' For this power is the grace 
of the Holy Spirit ; whose unction cleanses away sins, if any remain to be 
expiated, even the last traces of sin ; and relieves and confirms the soul of 
the sick man, exciting in him strong confidence of the divine mercy ; by 
which strengthened, he bears far better the inconveniences and pains of his 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 483 

disorr'er; resists more easily the temptations of the devil, who does, as it 
were, lie m wait at his heels ; and sometimes obtains the restoration of his 
bodily health, if the same shall further the salvation of his soul. 

III. The Minister of this Sacrament, and the time at which it is to he given. 

"And now as to the law relative to the persons who are to receive and ad- 
minister this sacrament ; this is laid down with suflQcient clearness in the 
afore-cited words. For there it appears that the ' elders of the church,' are 
the proper ministers of this sacrament : which appellation is to be understood 
in that passage as meaning either bishops, or priests regularly ordained by 
them, with laying on of the hands of the presbytery, and not persons ad- 
vanced i-n years, or of elevated rank. The council also declares that this 
unction is to be applied to the sick, and especially to those who lie in so dan- 
gerous a state, as in all appearance to be appointed to death, whence it is 
called ' the sacrament of the dying.' But if the sick recover after receiving 
this unction, ^they may again enjoy the aid of the sacrament, when they are 
in similar danger of their lives. Wherefore, those persons are on no account 
to be hstened to, who teach, in opposition to the most express and lucid state- 
ments of the apostle James, that this unction is a human invention, or a rite 
received from the fathers, but not a command of God, with promise of grace ; 
nor those who affirm that its power has long ago ceased, as if the gift of 
healing belonged to the primitive church only ; nor those who say that the 
rites and customs observed by the holy Roman church, in the administration 
of this sacrament, are opposed to the language of the apostle James, and 
therefore may be changed for any other ; nor, finally, those who assert that 
this extreme unction may be despised by the faithful without sin. For all 
these assertions are manifestly contradictory to the plain words of the great 
apostle. Nor, indeed, has the church of Rome, the mother and mistress of 
all other churches, adopted any observance in administering this unction, as 
far as relates to the substance of the sacrament, than was enjoined by the 
blessed apostle James. Neither can so important a sacrament be despised, 
without great sin, and insult to the Holy Spirit himself." 

" Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm that extreme unction is not truly and 
properly a sacrament, instituted by Christ our Lord, and published by the 
blessed apostle James, but only a ceremony received from the fathers, or a 
human invention : le.t him be accursed. 

" 2. Whoever shall affirm, that the sacred unction of the sick does not confer 
grace, nor forgive sin, nor relieve the sick ; but that its power has ceased, as 
if the gift of heaUng existed only in past ages : let him be accursed. 

"3. Whoever shall affirm, that the rite and practice of extreme unction 
observed by the holy Roman church is repugnant to the doctrine of the bless- 
ed apostle James, and therefore that it may be altered or despised without sin : 
let him be accursed. 

"4. Whoever shall affirm, that the 'elders of the church,' whom blessed 
James exhorts to be brought in to anoint the sick man, are not priests, ordain- 
ed by the bishop, but persons advanced in years, in any community ; and 
therefore that the priest is not the only proper minister of extreme unction : 
let him be accursed." 



Communion in one Kind. — " Seeing that many and monstrous errors con- 
cerning the awful and most holy sacrament of the eucharist, are by the arts 
of the wicked spirit disseminated in different places ; through which, in some 
provinces, many seem to have departed from the faith and obedience of the 
Catholic church : — the sacred, holv, oecumenical, and general Council of Trent, 
lawfully assembled, &c. hath judged proper to explain in this place the doc- 
trine of communion, in both kinds, and of children. Wherefore, all Christ's 
faithful are strictly enjoined, that henceforth they dare not believe, teach, or 
preach, otherwise than is explained and defined in this decree. 



484 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

I. Tlie Laiiy and non-officiating Clergy are not bound by the divine law to 
receive the communion in both kinds. 
' The sacred council therefore, taught by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wis- 
dom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and -piety, and following the 
judgment and practice of the church, doth declare and teach, that the laity and 
non-officiating clergy are not bound by any divine precept to receive the 
sacrament of the eucharist in both Idnds ; nor can any one who holds the 
true faith indulge the slightest doubt that communion in either kind is suf- 
ficient to salvation. For although Christ the Lord did in the last supper 
institute this venerable sacrament of the eucharist in the species of bread and 
^vine, and thus delivered it to the apostles; yet it does not thence follow that 
all the faithful in Christ are bound by divine statute to receive both kinds. 
Nor can it be fairly proved from the discourse recorded in the 6th chapter of 
John, that communion in both kinds is commanded by the Lord, howsoever 
the same may have been interpreted by various holy fathers and doctors. — 
For he who said, 'Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his 
blood, you shall not have life in you,' v. 54., said also, ' If any man eat of this 
bread, he shall live for ever,' v. 52. ; and he who said, ' He that eateth my 
flesh and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life,' v. 55., said also, ' The 
bread that I will give is n:iy flesh for the life oflhe world,' v. 52. ; and lastly, 
he who said, 'He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, abideth in me ^ 
and 1 in him,' v. 57., said nevertheless, ' He that eateth this bread shall live 
for ever,' v. 59. 

IL Power of the Church regarding the dispensation of the Sacrament of 
' the Eucharist. 

" The council further declares, that in the dispensation of the sacraments 
the church hath always possessed the power, so that their substance was 
preserved, of making such appointments and alterations, according to the 
change of things, times, and places, as it should judge would best promote 
the benefit of the recipients, and the veneration due to the sacraments them- 
selves. Which indeed the apostle seems to have not obscurely intimated, 
when he said, ' Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ 
and the dispensers of the mysteries of God.' 1 Cor. iv. 1. For it is suffi- 
ciently plain, that he himself used this power, not only in other respects, but 
also with regard to this sacrament, because, when he had given various 
directions respecting its use, he added, 'And the rest I will set in order when 
I come.' 1 Cor. xi. 34. Wherefore, though from the beginning of the Chris- 
tian religion the use of both kinds was not infrequent, yet when in process of 
time that practice was for weighty and just causes changed, holy mother 
church, recognising her acknowledged authority in the administration of the 
sacraments, approved the custom of communion in one kind, and commanded 
it to be observed as law : to condemn or alter which, at pleasure, without the 
authority of the church itself, is not lawful. 

in. Hie true Sacrament^ and Christ whole and entire^ is received under 

either species. 
" Moreover, the council declares, that though our Redeemer, as has been 
before said, did in the last supper institute this sacrament in two kinds, and 
"^ thus deliver it to the apostles, it must nevertheless be granted that the true 

sacrament, and Christ whole and entire, is received in either kind by itself; 
and therefore, that as far as regards the finiit of the sacrament, those who 
receive one Idnd only are not deprived of any grace that is necessary to sal- 
vation. 

IV. Sacramental Communion is not obligatory on Children. 
'''Lastly, the same holy council teaches, that the sacramental communion 
of the eucharist is not necessarily obligatory on children, who have not at- 
tained the use of reason. For being regenerated in the laver of baptism, and 
incorporated mto Christ, they cannot lose the gracious state of children of 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 485 

God, which was acquired at that time. Nevertheless antiquity is not to he 
condemned, on account of that practice having been formerly observed in 
some places. For though the holy fathers had sufficient grounds for the 
cu>tom, in the then existing state of things, yet it must be without doubt 
believed that they did not attend to it, as necessary to salvation. 

" Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm, that all and every one of Christ's faith- 
ful are bound bv divine command to receive the most holy sacrament of the 
eucharist in both kinds, as necessary to salvation : let him be accursed. 

"2. Whoever shall affirm, that the holy Catholic church had not just 
grounds and reasons for restricting the laity and non-officiating clergy to 
communion in the species of bread only, or that she hath erred tlierein : let 
him be accursed. 

"3. W^hoever shall deny that Christ, whole and entire, the fountain and 
author of every grace, is received under the one species of bread ; because, 
as some falsely affirm, he is not then received according to his own institu- 
tion, in both kinds : let him be accursed. 

" 4. Whoever shall affirm, that the communion of the eucharist is neces- 
sary to children, before they reach the years of discretion : let him be ac- 
cursed." 



The Mass. — ^' That the ancient, complete and perfect faith and doctrine of 
the holy Catiiolic church respecting the great mystery of the eucharist may 
be retained and preserved in its purity, and all errors and heresies be banished 
away — the sacred, holy, oecumenical and general council of Trent, lawfully 
assembled, &c. instructed by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, teaches, 
declares, and hereby decrees to be announced to all Christian people, how 
far the same is to be regarded as a true and proper sacrifice. 

I. Institution of the Most Holy Sacrijice of the Mass. 
" Since there was no perfection under the first testament, as the Apostle 
Paul testifies; because of the weakness of the Levitical priesthood, it behov- 
ed God, the Father of mercies, to ordain that another priest should arise, 
after the order of Melchizedec, even our Lord Jesus Christ, who might com- 
plete and bring to perfection as many as should be sanctified. He therefore, 
our God and Lord, when about to offer himself once for all to God the Father 
by his death, on the altar of the cross, that there he might accomplish eter- 
nal redemption — knowing that his priesthood was not to be abolished by 
death — in the last sapper, on the night in which he was betrayed, declared 
himself to be constituted a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedec, 
oflered his body and blood to God the Father under the species of bread and 
wine, and by these symbols dehvered the same to be received by hi-s apostles, 
whom he tilten appointed priests of the new testament, and commanded them 
and their successors in the priesthood to offer the same, saying, ' Do this for 
a commemoration of me.' Luke xxii. 19. Thus hath the Catholic church 
always understood and taught this doctrine ; and this the Saviour did, that 
he might leave to his beloved spouse, the church, a visible sacrifice, such as 
human nature required, by which the bloody sacrifice made on the cross 
might be represented, the memory thereof preserved to the end of the world, 
and its salutary virtue applied for the remission of those sins which are daily 
committed by us. For as the Israelites of old sacrificed the passover in 
memory of their departure from Egypt, so the Redeemer instituted a new 
passover, wherein he is himself sacrificed by the church, through the priests, 
under the visible signs, in memory of his passage from this world to the 
Father, after he had redeemed us by the shedding of his blood, delivered us 
from the power of darkness, and translated us into his kingdom. And tiuly 
this is the 'clean oblation' which cannot be defiled by any unworthinsss or 
sin of the offerer; respecting which the Lord foretold by Malachi that it 
should be offered in every place to his name, which should be great among 
the Gentiles : as also the apostle did not obscurely intimatej when he said, in 
41* 



486 DECREES AN^D CANONS OF THE 

his epistle to the Corinthians, that those who were polluted hy participation 
of the table of devils, could not be partakers of the table of the Lord ; under- 
standing that the word ' table' was always used for ' altar.' Finally, this is 
the sacrifice which was figuratively represented by the various sacrifi'^es 
offered in the times of nature and of the law; since it includes ever 5^ good 
wliich was signified by them, and is the consummation and perfection of 
them all. 

II. The Sacrifice of the Mass is Propitiatory, both for the Living and the 

Dead. 
" And since the same Christ who once offered himself by his blood on the 
altar of the cross, is contained in this divine sacrifice which is celebrated in 
the mass, and offered without blood, the holy council teaches that this sacri- 
fice is really propitiatory, and made by Christ himself; so that if we approach 
God contrite and penitent, wath a true heart and sincere faith, with fear and 
reverence, we 'obtain mercy and find grace in seasonable aid.' Heb. iv. 16. 
For assuredly God is appeased by this oblation, bestows grace and the gift of 
repentance, and forgives all crimes and sins, how great soever ; for the sacrifice 
which is now offered by the ministry of the priests is one and the same as that 
which Christ then offered on the cross, only the mode of offering is different. 
And the fruits of that bloody oblation are plentifully enjoyed by m.eans of 
this unbloody one; so untrue is it that the latter derogates from the glory of 
the former. Wherefore it is properly offered, according to apostohc tradition, 
not only for the sins, punishments, satisfactions, and other necessities of 
hving believers, but also for the dead in Christ, who are not yet thoroughly 
purified. 

III. Masses in Honour of the Saints. 
"Although the church is accustomed to celebrate sometimes certain masses 
in honour and memory of the saints, nevertheless it teaches that sacrifice is 
not offered to them, but to God only, who has crowned them with glory ; 
whence the priest doth not say, ' I offer sacrifice to thee, Peter, or Paul,' but 
giving thanks to God for their victories, he implores their patronage, that 
they whom we commemorate on earth may vouchsafe to intercede for us in 
heaven. 

IV. Canon of the Mass. 
" And since it is fit that holy services should be administered in a holy 
manner, and this sacrifice is the holiest of all, the Catholic church hath 
many ages ago instituted a sacred canon, in order that it might be worthily 
and reverently offered and received ; which canon is so free from every error, 
as to contain nothing which does not powerfully savour of holiness and 
piety, and tend to raise the minds of the worshippers to God ; for it is com- 
posed of the words of our Lord himself, the traditions of the apostles, and 
the pious institutions of holy pontiffs. 

V. Solemn Ceremonies of the Sacrifice of the Mass. 

" Seeing that such is the nature of man, that he cannot easily be raised to 
ihe contemplation of divine things without external aid, holy mother church 
nath insthuted certain rites, as for instance, that some parts of the mass 
should be spoken in a low tone of voice, others in a louder. Ceremonies are 
also used, such as mystical benedictions, lights, incense, vestments, and 
others of the same kind, gathered from apostolic discipline and tradition, 
whereby the majesty of this great sacrifice is set forth, and by these visible 
signs of religion anci piety the minds of the faithful are excited to the con- 
templation of the deep truths which are therein contained. 

VI. Masses in which the Priest only Communicates. 

'■This hoi J council could wish, that at every mass the faithful who are 
present would communicate, not in spiritual gffection only, but also in the 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 487 

«acramental reception of the eucharist, in order that the fruit of this most 
holy sacrifice might be more plentifully enjoyed. But although this is not 
always done, the council does not therefore condemn those masses in which 
the priest only sacramentally communicates, as if they were private and 
unlawful, but approves and commends them. For even such masses ought 
to he deemed common to all, partly because in them the people do spiritually 
communicate, and partly because they are celebrated by the public minister 
of the church, not for nimself only, but also for all the faithful who belong 
to the body of Christ. 

VII. Mixing Water with the Wine in offering the Cup. 
'' Further, the holy council reminds all men that the priests are command- 
ed by the church to mix water with the wine in the cup, when they offer the 
sacrifice ; partly, because Christ the Lord is believed to have done the same, 
and partly because water, together with blood, flowed from his side, which 
sacrament is brought to remembrance by this mixture : and since people are 
represented by water, in the apocalypse of blessed John, the union of 
believers with Christ the head is thus also represented. 

VIII. Tlie Mass not to be celebrated in the Vulgar Tongue — its Mysteries 
to be explained to the People. 
" Although the mass comprises abundant instruction for those who believCj 
it has not been deemed expedient by the fathers that it should be everywhere 
celebrated in the vernacular tongue. Wherefore, lest the sheep of Christ 
hunger, and the children ask bread and there be none to break it to them, 
through the universal retention of a custom which has been approved by the 
holy Roman church, the mother and mistress of all churches, the holy 
council commands all priests having cure of souls, to intersperse in the cele- 
bration of the mass, either personally or by others, explanations of wliat has 
been read, and frequently to expound the mystery of this most holy sacrifice, 
especially on Sundays and feast-days. 

IX. Canons. 

" Seeing that in this age many errors are disseminated, and many persons 
teach and dispute in opposition to this ancient faith, which is founded on the 
'holy gospel, the traditions of the apostles, and the doctrine of venerable 
fathers ; this most holy council, having frequently, seriously, and maturely 
discussed the subject, hath determined by unanimous consent to condemn 
and root out of the church all that is contrary to this pure faith and sacred 
doctrine, by the canons hereto subjoined. 

" Canon 1. Whoever shall aflBirm, that a true and proper sacrifice is not 
offered to God in the mass ; or that the offering is nothing else than giving 
Christ to us, to eat : let him be accursed. 

" 2. Whoever shall afiirm, that by those words, ' Do this for a commemo- 
ration of me,' Christ did not appoint his apostles priests, or did not ordain 
that they and other priests should offer his body and blood : let him be 
accursed. 

" 3. Whoever shall afiftrm, that the sacrifice of the mass is only a service 
of praise and thanksgiving, or a bare commemoration of the sacrifice made 
on the cross, and not a propitiatory offering; or that it only benefits him who 
receives it, and ought not to be offered for the living and. the dead, for sins, 
pur ishments, satisfactions, and other necessities : let him be accursed. 

" 4. Whoever shall affirm, that the most holy sacrifice of Christ, made on 
the cross, is blasphemed by the sacrifice of the mass ; or that the latter dero- 
gates from the glory of the former : let him be accursed. 

"5. Whoever shall affirm, that to celebrate masses in honour of the 
saints, and in order to obtain their intercession with God, according to the 
intention of the church, is an impo^sture : let him be accursed. 

" 6. W^hoever shall alfirm, that the canon of the mass contahis errors, and 
eught therefore to he- abolished -• let him be accursed. 



488 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

"7. Whoever shall affirm, that the ceremonies, vestments, and external 
signs used by the Catholic church, in the celebration of the mass, are excite- 
ments to irreligion, rather than helps to piety : let him be accursed. 

"8. Whoever shaU affirm, that those masses in which the priest only 
communicates sacramentally are unlawful, and therefore ought to be abohsh- 
ed : let him be accursed. 

"9. Whoever shall affirm, that the practice of the Roman church, in utter- 
ing with a low voice part of the canon and the words of consecration, is to be 
condemned ; or that the mass should be celebrated in the vernacular language 
only ; or that water is not to be mixed in the cup with wine, when the sacri- 
fice is offered, because it is contrary to Christ's institution: let him be 
accursed." 



ORDERS. 

I. Institution of the Priesthood of the New Law. 
" Sacrifice and priesthood are so joined by the ordinance of God, that both 
are found together in every dispensation. Since therefore, under the New 
Testament, the Cathohc church has received by divine institution the holy 
and visible sacrifice of the eucharist, it must be acknowledged that she has 
a new, and visible, and external priesthood, in the place of the old. Now 
the sacred scriptures show, and the tradition of the Catholic church has 
always taught, that this priesthood was instituted by the Lord our Saviour, 
and that to his apostles and their successors in the priesthood, the power 
was given to consecrate, offer, and minister his body and blood, and also to 
remit and retain sins. 

II. T7ie Seven Orders. 
" As the ministry of so exalted a priesthood is a divine thing, it was meet, 
in order to surround it with the greater dignity and veneration, that in the 
admirable economy of the church, there should be several distinct orders of 
ministers, intended: by their office to serve the priesthood, and so disposed, as 
that, begnming with the clerical tonsure, they may ascend gradually through 
the lesser to the greater orders. For the sacred scriptures make express 
mention of deacons as well as of priests, and instruct us in very serious 
languag^e respecting those things which are to be specially regarded in their 
ordination; and from the beginning of the church, the names and appro- 
priate duties of the following orders are known to have been in use : sub- 
deacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers, and porters. Although they are not all 
of equal rank ; for sub-deacons are placed among the greater orders by the 
fathers and holy councils, in w^hich also we very frequently read of other 
inferior orders. 

III. Orders are truly and properly a Sacrament. 
'' Since it is evident, from the testimony of scripture, apostohc tradition, 
and the unanimous consent of the fathers, that by holy ordination, bestowed 
by words and external signs, grace is conferred ; no one ought to doubt that 
orders constitute one of the seven sacraments of holy church. For the apos- 
tle saith, ' I admonish thee, that thou stir up the grace of God which is in thee 
by the imposition of my hands. For God hath not ffiven us the spirit of 
fear : but of power, and of love, and of sobriety.' 2 Tim. i. 6, 7. 

IV. TTie Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and Ordination. 
" Forasmuch then as in the sacrament of orders, as in baptism and con- 
firmation, a character is impressed, which can neither be destroyed nor taken 
away, the holy council deservedly condemns the notion of those who assert 
that the priests of the New Testament have only a temporary power, and 



COUNCIL or TRENT 489 

that those who have been rightly ordained may become laymen again, if they 
should cease to exercise the ministry of the word of God. Moreover, if any 
one affirm that all christians promiscuously are priests of the New Testa- 
ment, or that all are endued with equal spiritual power, he does nothing less 
than confound the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which resembles a well-appointed 
army; as if, in opposition to the doctrine of blessed Paul, all were apostles, 
all were prophets, all vv^ere evangelists, all were pastors, all were teachers. 
Further, the holy council declares, that in addition to other ecclesiastical 
degrees, bishops, who have succeeded to the place of the apostles, hold a dis- 
tinguished rank in this hierarchical order ; that they are placed by the Holy 
Spirit, as the same apostle saith, to rule the church of God : that they are 
superior to presbyters: and that they administer the sacrament of confirma* 
tion, ordain the ministers of the church, and perform many other offices, to 
which those who are in inferior orders have no right. The holy council 
further declares, that in the ordination of bishops, priests, and the other 
orders, the consent, call, or authority of the people, or of any secular power 
or magistracy, is not so necessary, as that without the same the oidjnation 
would be invalid : on the contrary, it is hereby declared, that all those who 
presumptuously undertake and assume the offices of the ministry v/ith no 
other call and appointment than that of the people, or of the secular power 
and magistracy, are not to be accounted ministers of the church, but thieves 
and robbers, who have not entered in by the door. 

" Thus much it hath seemed good to the holy council to teach the faithful 
respecting the sacrament of orders. Opposite sentiments are condemned in 
the manner following, by express and appropriate canons ; that amidst the 
prevailing darkness of error, all men may, by the help of Christ, adopting 
this rule of faith, easily discern and retain the Catholic truth. 

" Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm, that under the New Testament there is 
not a visible and external priesthood ; or that there is no power to consecrate 
and offer the true body and blood of the Lord, and remit and retain sins, but 
only the bare office and ministry of preaching the gospel ; or that those who 
do not preach are by no means to be considered priests : let him be accursed. 

" 2. Whoever shall affirm, that there are not in the Catholic church, besides 
the priesthood, other orders, both greater and lesser, by which, as by degrees, 
the priesthood may be ascended : let him be accursed. 

"3. Whoever shall affirm, that orders, or holy ordination, is not truly and 
properly a sacrament, instituted by Christ the Lord ; or that it is a human 
invention, devised by men unskilful in things ecclesiastical ; or that it is only 
the ceremony of choosing the ministers of the word of God and of the sacra- 
ments : let him be accursed. 

"4. Whoever shall affirm, that the Holy Spirit is not given by ordination; 
and therefore, that bishops say in vain, 'Receive the Holy Ghost ;' or that 
thereby a character is not impressed ; or that he who was once a priest may 
become a layman again : let him be accursed. 

" 5. Whoever shall affirm, that the sacred unction used by the church in 
holy ordination, as well as the other ceremonies observed in bestowing 
orders, are not only unnecessary, but ridiculous and hurtful : let him be 
accursed. 

" 6. Whoever shall affirm, that there is not in the Catholic church a 
hierarchy instituted by divine appohitment, and consisting of bishops, pres- 
byters, and ministers : let him be accursed. 

"7. Whoever shall affirm, that bishops are not superior to presbyters; or 
that they have not the power of confirming or ord8l'ning ; or that the power 
which they have is common to them and presbyters; or that orders confer- 
red by them without the consent or calling of the people, or the secular 
power, are invalid ; or that those who are not properly ordained or instituted 
according to ecclesiastical or canonical power, but derive their ordination from 
some other source, are lawful ministers of the w' ord and the sacraments : let 
him be accursed. 

"8. Whoever shall affirm, that those bishops who are pecuhariy appointed 



490 DECREES AXD CANONS OF THE 

by the authority of the Roman pontiff are not lawful and true bishops, but a 
human invention : let him be accursed." 



Mathimony. — " The first parent of the human race, inspired by the divine 
Spirit, pronounced the bond of marriage to be perpetual and indissoluble, 
when he said, ' This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh ; where- 
fore a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, 
and they shall be tv/o in one flesh.' Gen. ii. 23, 24. 

" Christ our Lord hath expressly taught that two persons only can be 
joined together and united in this bond. Having quoted the last-mentioned 
words, as proceeding from God, he said, ' Therefore now they are not two, 
but one flesh :' and immediately afterwards he confirmed the durability of 
the connexion, as it had been so long before declared by Adam, by adding, 
' What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.' Mat. 
xix. 5, 6. 

" Christ also, who hath instituted and perfected the venerable sacraments, 
hath by his passion merited the grace which gives perfection to natural love, 
confirms the indissokible union, and sanctifies those who are united. Which 
the apostle Paul intimated, when he said ; ' Husbands, love your wives, as 
Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself for it,' presently adding, 
* This is a great sacrament, but I speak in Christ and in the church. Ephes. 
V. 25. 32. 

" Since, therefore, under the gospel, matrimony excels the nuptials of the 
ancients, because of the grace received through Christ, our holy fathers, the 
councils, and the universal tradition of the church have always taught that 
it is deservedly reckoned among the sacraments of the new law. Against 
which doctrine impious men have raved in these times, not only indulging 
wrongful thoughts respecting this venerable sacrament, but also, according 
to their manner, introducing liberty of the flesh under cover of the gospel, 
and writing and speaking much that is contrary to the sentiments of the 
Catholic church, and the approved customs that are derived from the apos- 
tohc era — greatly to the peril of the faithful in Christ. Therefore this holy 
and universal council, desiring to prevent such rashness, hath determined to 
destroy the infamous heresies and errors of the beforenamed schismatics, lest 
many more should be aflected by their destructive contagion; for which 
cause the following anathemas are decreed against those heretics and their 
errors. 

" Canon 1. Whoever shall affirm that matrimony is not tmly and properly 
one of the seven sacraments of the evangelical law, instituted by Christ 
our Lord, but that it is a human invention, introduced into the church, and 
does not confer grace : let him be accursed. ' 

"2. Whoever shall affirm, that Christians may have more wives than one, 
and that this is prohibited by no divine law : let him be accursed. 

" 3. WHioever shall affirm, that only thosedegreesof consanguinity or affinity 
which are mentioned in the book of Leviticus can hinder or annul the mar- 
riage contract; and that the church has no power to dispense with some of 
them, or to constitute additional hindrances or reasons for annulhng the con- 
tract : let him be accursed. 

" 4. Whoever shall affirm, that the church cannot constitute any impedi- 
ments, with power to annul matrimony, or that constituting them she has 
erred : let him be accursed. 

" 5. Whoever shall affirm, that the marriage bond may be dissolved by 
heresy, or mutual dislike, or voluntary absence from the husband or wife : let 
him be accursed. 

" 6. Whoever shall affirm, that a marriage solemnized but not consummated 
is not annulled if one of the parties enters into a religious order : let him be 
accursed. 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 491 

"7. Whoever shall affirm, that the church has erred in teaching, according 
to the evangehcal and apostolic doctrine that the marriage bond cannot be 
dissolved by the adultery of one of the parties, and that neither of them, 
not even the innocent party, who has given no occasion for the adultery, can 
contract another marriage while the other party hves — and that the husband 
who puts away his adulterous wife, and marries another, commits adultery, 
and also the wife who puts away her adulterous husband, and marries an- 
other ; whoever shall aftirm that the church has erred in maintaining these 
sentiments, let him be accursed. 

"8. Whoever shall affirm, that the church has erred in decreeing that for 
various reasons married persons may be separated, as far as regards actual 
cohabitation, either for a certain or an uncertain time: let him be accursed. 

" 9. Whoever shall affirm, that persons in holy orders, or regulars, who 
have made a solemn profession of chastity, may contract marriage, and that 
the contract is valid, notwithstanding any ecclesiastical law or vow ; and 
that to maintain the contrary is nothing less than to condemn marriage ; and 
that all persons may marry who feel that though they should make a vow of 
chastity, they have not the gift thereof; let him be accursed — for God does 
not deny his gifts to those who ask aright, neither does he suffer us to be 
tempted above that we are able. 

" 10. Whoever shall affirm, that the conjugal state is to be preferred to a 
life of virginity or celibacy, and that it is not better and more conducive to 
happiness to remain in virginity or celibacy than to be married : let him be 
accursed. 

" 11. Whoever shall affirm, that to prohibit the solemnization of marriage 
at certain seasons of the year is a tyrannical superstition, borrov/ed from the 
superstitions of the pagans ; or shall condemn the benedictions and other 
ceremonies used by the church at those times : let him be accursed. 

" 12. Whoever shall affirm, that matrimonial causes do not belong to the 
ecclesiastical judges : let him be accursed." 



Monastic Orders. — Abstract of the Decree passed in the twenty-fifth 
Session of the Council of Trent. — " It was enacted, that care should be taken 
to procure strict observance of the rules of the respective professions ; that 
no regular should be allowed to possess any private property, but should sur- 
render every thing to his superior ; that all monasteries^ even those of the 
mendicants^ the capuchins and friars minor observantins excepted, at their 
own request, should he permitted to hold estates^ and other wealth ; that no 
monk should be suffered to undertake any office v/hatever, without his supe- 
rior's consent, nor to quit the convent without a written permission ; that 
nunneries should he kept carefully closed^ and egress be absolutely forbidden 
to the nuns, under any pretence whatsoever, loWiout episcopal license, on pain 
of excomTTiunication — magistrates being enjoined under the same penalties to 
aid the bishops, if necessary, by employing force, and the latter being urged 
to their duty by the fear of the judgment of God, and the eternal curse ; that 
monastics should confess and receive the eucharist at least once a month ; 
that if any public scandal should arise out of their conduct, they should be 
judged and punished by the superior, or in case of his failure, by the bishop : 
that no renunciation of property or pecuniary engagement should be valid 
unless made within two months of taking the vows of religious profession : 
that immediately after the noviciate, the novices should either be dismissed or 
take the vow, and that if they were dismissed, nothing should be received 
from them but a reasonable payment for their board, lodging, and clothing, 
during the noviciate; that no females should take the veil without previous 
examination by the bishop ; that whoever compelled females to enter con- 
vents against their will, from avaricious or other motives, or on the other 
band, hindered such as were desirous of the monastic life, should be excom- 



492 DECFwEES AND CANONS OF THE 

mimicated ; that if any monk or nun pretended that they had taken the vows 
under the influence of force or fear, or before the age appointed by law, 
they should not be heard, except within five years of their profession — if 
they laid aside the habit of their own accord, they should not be permitted 
to make the complainty but be compelled i» return to the monastery, and be 
punished as apostates, being, in the rrfiantime, deprived of all the privileges 
of their order. With regard to the general reformation of the corruptions 
and abuses which existed in convents, the council lamented the great difficulty 
ojf applying any efFectual remedy, but hoped that the supreme pontiff would 
provide for the exigences of the case, as far as the times would bear. 



Purgatory. — " Since the Catholic church, instructed by the Holy Spirit, 
through the sacred writings and the ancient tradition of the fathers, hath 
taught in holy councils, and lastly in this oecumenical council, that there is a 
purgatory, and that the souls detained there are assisted by the suffrages of 
the faithful, but especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the mass ; this holy 
council commands all bishops diligently to endeavour that the wholesome 
doctrine of purgatory, delivered to us by venerable fathers and holy councils, 
be believed and held by Christ's faithful, and everywhere taught and preach- 
ed. Let difficult and subtle questions, which tend not to edification, and 
from which commonly religion derives no advantage, be banished from popu- 
lar discourses, particularly when addressed to the ignorant multitude. Let 
such as are of doubtful character, or seem to border upon error, be prevented 
from being published and discussed. Let those which promote mere curiosity, 
or superstition, or savour of filthy lucre, be prohibited as scandalous and 
offensive to Christians. Let the bishops take care that the suffrages of 
the living faithful, masses, prayers, alms, and other works of piety, which 
the faithful have been accustomed to perform for departed believers, be 
piously and religiously rendered, according to the institutes of the church ; 
and whatever services are due to the dead, through the endowments of 
deceased persons, or in any other way, let them not be performed slightly, 
but diligently and carefully, by the priests and mniisters of the chmxh, and 
all others to whom the duty belongs." 



Indulgences.—" Since the power of granting indulgences has been 
bestowed by Christ upon his church, and this power, divinely given, has been 
used from the earhest antiquity, the holy council teaches and enjoins that the 
use of indulgences, so salutary to Christian people, and approved by the 
authority of venerable councils, shall be retained by the church; and it 
anathematizes those who assert that iliey are useless, or deny that the 
church has the power of granting them. Nevertheless, the council desires 
that moderation be shown in granting them, according to the ancient and 
approved custom of the church, lest by too much laxity ecclesiastical disci- 
phne be weakened. Anxious moreover to correct and amend the abuses that 
have crept in, and by reason of which this honourable name of indulgences 
is blasphemed by the heretics, the council determines generally by this pre- 
sent decree, that all ^\ncked gains accruing from them, which have been the 
principal source of these abuses, shall be wholly abohshed. But with regard 
to other abuses, proceeding from superstition, ignorance, irreverence, or any 
other cause whatever ; seeing that they cannot be severally prohibited, on 
account of the great variety of evils existing in so many places and provinces, 
the coimcil commands e-ach bishop to procure a careful account of the abuses 
existing within his own jurisdiction, and lay the same before the first pro- 
vincial synod ; that when the opinion of other bishops has been obtained, 
the whole may be immediately referred to thepontiffj by whose authority and 
prudence such enactments will be made as are expedient for the luiiversal 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 493 

church ; so that the ^ft of holy indulgences may be dispensed to the faithful 
in a pious, holy, and incorrupt manner." 



Choice of Meats and Drinks, Fasts, and Feast-Days. — "]Moreover, 
the holy council exhorts all pastors, and beseeches them by the most holy 
coming of our Lord and Saviour, that as ^ood soldiers of Jesus Christ, they 
assiduously recommend to all the faithful the observance of all the institu- 
tions of the holy Roman church, the mother and mistress of all churches, 
and of the decrees of this and other oecumenical councils ; and that thev use 
all diligence to promote obedience to all their commands, and especially to 
those which relate to the mortification of the flesh, as the choice of meats 
and fasts ; as also to those which tend to the increase of piety, and the de- 
vout and religious celebration of feast-days ; admonishing the people to obey 
those who aie set over them — for they who hear them, shall hear God, the 
re warder — but they who despise them, shall feel that God is the avenger." 



Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of the Saints, and also con- 
cerning Sacred Images. — "The holy council commands all bishops, and 
others who have the care and charge of teaching, that according to the prac- 
tice of the Catholic and apostoUc church, received from the first beginning of 
the Christian religion, the consent of venerable fathers, and the decrees of holy 
councils, they labour with diligent assiduity to instruct the faithful concern- 
ing the invocation and intercession of the saints, the honour due to relics, and 
the lawful use of images; teaching them that the saints, who reign together 
with Christ, oflfer their prayers to God for men — that it is a good and useful 
thing suppliantly to invoke them, and to flee to their prayers, help, and 
assistance, because of the benefits bestowed by God through his Son Jesus 
Christ our Lord, who is our only Redeemer and Saviour; and that those are 
men of impious sentiments who deny that the saints, who enjoy eternal 
happiness in heaven, are to be invoked — or who aflftrm that they do not 
pray for men, or to beseech them to pray for us is idolatry, or that it is 
contrary to the word of God, and opposed to the honour of Jesus Christ, the 
one Mediator between God and men, or that it is fooHsh to supplicate, 
verbally or menially, those who reign in heaven. 

" Let them teach also, that the holy bodies of the holy martyrs and others 
living vnth Christ, whose bodies were living members of Christ and temples 
of the Holy Spirit, and will be by him raised to eternal life and glorified, are to 
be venerated by the faithful, since by them God bestows many benefits upon 
men. So that they are to be wholly condemned, as the church has long 
before condemned them, and now repeats the sentence, who affirm that 
veneration and honour are not due to the relics of the saints, or that it is a 
useless thing that the faithful should honour these and other sacred 
monuments, and that the memorials of the saints are in vain frequented, to 
obtain their help and assistance. 

" Moreover, let them teach that the images of Christ, of the Virgin, Mother 
of God, and of other saints, are to be had and retained, especially in churches, 
and due honour and veneration rendered to them. Not that it is believed 
that any divinity or power resides in them, on account of which they are to 
be worshipped, or that any benefit is to be sought from them, or any confi- 
dence placed in images, as was formerly by the Gentiles, who fixed their 
hope in idols. But the honour with which they are regarded is referred to 
those who are represented by them ; so that v/e adore Christ, and venerate 
the saints, whose likenesses these images bear, when we kiss them, and 
uncover our heads in their presence, and prostrate ourselves. All which has 
been sanctioned by the decrees of councils against the impugners of images, 
especially the second council of Nice." 
42 



494 DECREES AND CANONS OF THE 

" Let the bishops teach further, that by the records of the mysteries of our 
redemption, expressed in pictures or other simihtudes, men are instructed and 
confirmed in those articles of faith which are especially to be remembered 
and cherished; and that great advantages are derived from all sacred images, 
not only because the people are thus reminded of the benefits and gifts which 
are bestowed upon them by Christ, but also because the divine miracles 
performed by the saints, and their salutary examples, are thus placed before 
the eyes of the faithful, that they may give thanks to God for them, order 
their lives and manners. in imitation of the saints, and be excited to adore 
and love God, and cultivate piety. Whoever shall teach or thhik in opposi- 
tion to these decrees let him be accursed. 

'• But if any abuses have crept into these sacred and salutary observances, 
the holy council earnestly desires that they may be altogether abolished, so 
that no images may be set up calculated to lead the ignorant into false doc- 
trine or dangerous error. And since the histories and narratives of sacred 
scripture are sometimes represented in painting or sculpture, for the benefit 
of the unlearned multitude, let men be taught, that when the Deity is thus 
represented, it is not to be supposed that the same can be seen by our bodily 
eyes, or that a likeness of God can be given in colour or figure. Moreover, 
let ail superstition in the invocation of saints, the veneration of rehcs, and 
the sacred use of images, be taken away ; let all base gain be abolished ; and 
lastly, let all indecency be avoided, so that images be neither painted nor 
adorned in a lascivious manner, nor the commemoration of the saints or 
visits to relics be abused by men to gluttony and drunkenness ; as though 
the festal days appointed in honour of the saints were to be spent in licen- 
tiousness and luxury. Finally, let all diligent caution be observed in these 
respects by the bishop, that nothing be done tending to disorder, impropriety 
or tumult, and no profane or unseemly exhibitions be allowed; for holiness 
becometh the house of God. And that these things may be faithfully 
observed, the holy council decrees that it shall not be lawful for any one to 
(ix or cause to be fixed a new image in any place or church, however exempt 
from ordinary jurisdiction, unless the same be approved by the bishop ; nor 
are any new miracles to be adnritted, or any nevr relics to be received, but 
with the recognition and approbation of the bishop, w^ho, having received 
information respecting the same, and taken the advice of divines and other 
pious men, v>^ill do whatever shall be judged consonant to truth and piety. 
But if any doubt or difificulty occurs in abolishing abuses, or any unusually 
important question arises, let the bishop wait forme opinion of his metropo- 
litan and the neighbouring bishops, assembled in provincial council ; yet so 
as that nothing new or hitherto unused in the church be decreed, v/ithout 
the cognizance of the most holy Roman pontiff." 



INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS. 

Ten rules enacted by the Council of Trent, and approved by Pope Piue 
IV., in a Bull, issued on the iicenly-fourth of March, 1564. 

iluLE. — " 1. All books condemned by the supreme pontiffs, or general 
councils, before the year 1515, and not comprised in the present Index, are, 
nevertheless, to be considered as condemned. 

"2. The books of heresiarchs, whether of those who broached or dissem- 
inated their heresies prior to the year above mentioned, or of those who have 
been, or are, the heads or leaders of heretics, as Luther, Zuingle, Calvin, 
Ealthasar Pacimontanus, Swenchfeld, and other similar ones, are altogether 
forbidden, whatever may be their names, titles, or subjects. And the books 
of other heretics, which treat professedly upon religion, are totally condemn- 
^1; but those which do not treat upon religion are allowed to be read, after 
bang examined and approved by Catholic divines, by order of the bishops 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 495 

and inquisitors. Those Catholic books also are permitted to be read, which 
have been coinposed by authors who have afterwards fallen into heresy, or 
who, after their fall, have returned into the bosom of the church, provided 
they have been approved by the theological faculty of some Catholic univer- 
sity, or by the general inquisition. 

"3. Translations of ecclesiastical writers, which have been hitherto pub- 
lished by condemned authors, are permitted to be read, if they contain nothing 
contrary to sound doctrine. Translations of the Old Testament may also be 
allowed, but only to learned and pious men, at the discretion of the"^ bishop ; 
provided they use them merely as elucidations of the vulgate version, in order 
to understand the Holy Scriptures, and not as the sacred text itself> But 
Translations of the New Testament made by authors of the first class of this 
Index, are allowed to no one, since httle advantage, but much danger, gener- 
ally arises from reading them. If notes accompany the versions which are 
allov/ed to be read, or are joined to the vulgate edition, they may be permit- 
ted to be read by the same persons as the versions, after the suspected places 
have been expunged by the theological faculty of some Catholic university, 
or by the general inquisitor. On the same conditions also, pious and learnea 
men may be permitted to have what is called Vatablus's Bible, or any part 
of it. But the preface and prolegomena of the Bible pubhshed by Isidoius 
Clarius are, however, excepted ; and the text of his editions is not to be con- 
sidered as the text of the vulgate edition. 

"4. Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience, that if the Holy Bible, 
translated into the vulgar tongue, be indiscriminately allowed to every one, 
the temerity of men will cause more evil than good to arise from it, it is, on 
this point, referred to the judgment of the bishops, or inquisitors, who may, 
by the advice of the priest or confessor, permit the reading of the Bible trans- 
lated into the vulgar tongue by Cathohc authors, to those persons Vv'hose faith 
and piety, they apprehend, will be augmented, and not injured by it ; and 
this permission they must have in writing. But if any one shall have the 
presumption to read or possess it without such written permission, he shall 
not receive absolution until he have first delivered up such Bible to the ordi- 
nary. Booksellers, however, who shall sell, or otherwise dispose of Bibles 
in the vulgar tongue, to any person not having such permission, shall for- 
feit the value of the Books, to be applied by the bishop to some pious use; and 
be subjected by the bishop to such other penalties as the bishop shall judge 
proper, according to the quality of the offence. But regulars shall neither 
read nor purchase such Bibles without a special license from their superiors. 

" 5. Books of which heretics are the editors, but which contain httle or 
nothing cf their own, being mere compilations from others, as lexicons, con- 
cordances, apophthegms, similes, indexes, and others of a similar kind, may 
be allowed by the bishops and inquisitors, after having made, with the advice 
of Catholic divine^ such corrections and emendations as may be deemed 
requisite. 

"6. Books of controversy betwixt the Catholics and heretics of the pre- 
sent time, written in the vulgar tongue, are not to be indiscrim'nately allowed, 
but are to be subject to the same regulations as Bibles in the vulgar tongue. 
As to those works in the vulgar tongue, which treat of morahty, contempla- 
tion, confession, and similar subjects, and which contain nothing contrary to 
sound doctrine, there is no reason why they should be prohibited; the same 
may be said also of sermons in the vulgar tongue, designed for the people. 
And if in any kingdom or province, any books have been hitherto prohibited, 
as containing things not proper to be read, without selection, by all sorts of 
persons, they may be allowed by the bishop and inquisitor, after having cor- 
ected them, if written by Catholic authors. 

"7. Books professedly treating of lascivious or obscene subjects, or nar- 
rating, or teaching them, are utterly prohibited, since, not only faith but mor- 
ils, which are readily corrupted by the perusal of them, are to be attended 
>d; and those who possess them shall be severely punished by the bishop. 
Dut the works of antiquity, written by the heathens, are permitted to be read* 



196 DECREES AND CANONS OP THE 

because of the elegance and propriety of the language ; though on no accctmt 

shall they be suffered to be read by young persons. 

"8. Books, the principal subject of which is good, but in which some 
things are occasionally introduced tending to heresy and impiety, divination, 
or superstition, may be allowed, after they have been corrected by Catholic 
divines, by the authority of the general inquisition. The same judgment is 
also formed of prefaces, summaries, or notes, taken from the condemned au- 
thors, and inserted in the works of authors not condemned ; but such works 
must not be printed in future, until they have been amended. 

" 9. All books and writings of geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyro- 
mancy, onomancy, chiromancy, and necromancy ; or which treat of sorce- 
ries, poisons, auguries, auspices, or magical incantations, are utterly rejected. 
The bishops shall also diligently guard against any persons reading or keep- 
ing any books, treatises, or indexes, which treat of judicial astrology, or con- 
tain presumptuous predictions of the events of future contingencies, and for- 
tuitous occurrences, or of those actions which depend upon the will of man. 
But such opinions and observations of natural things as are written in aid of 
navigation, agriculture, and medicine, are permitted. 

" 10. In the printing of books or other writings, the rules shall be observed, 
which were ordained in the 10th session of the council of Lateran, under 
Leo X. Therefore, if any book is to be printed in the city of Rome, it shall 
first be examined by the Pope's Vicar and the master of the sacred palace, 
or other persons chosen by our most holy father for that purpose. In other 
places, the examination of any book or manuscript intended to be printed 
shall be referred to the bishop, or some skilful person whom he shall nomi- 
nate, and the inquisitor of heretical pravity of the city or diocess in which 
the impression is executed, who shall gratuitously and without delay affix 
their approbation to the work in their own handwriting, subject, nevertneless, 
to the pains and censures contained in the said decree ; this law and condi- 
tion being added, that an authentic copy of the book to be printed, signed by 
the author himself, shall remain in the hands of the examiner: and it is the 
judgment of the fathers of the present deputation, that those persons who 
publish works in manuscript, before they have been examined and approved, 
should be subject to the same penalties as those who print them ; and that 
those who read or possess them should be considered as the authors, if the 
real authors of such writings do not avow themselves. The approbation 
given in writing shall be placed at the head of the books, whether printed or 
m manuscript, that they may appear to be duly authorized ; and this exami- 
nation and approbation, &c. shall be granted gratuitously. 

"Moreover, in every city and diocess, the house or places where the art of 
printing is exercised, and also the shops of booksellers, shall be frequently 
visited by persons deputed for that purpose by the bishop or his vicar, conjointly 
with the inquisitor of heretical pravity, so that nothing that is prohibited may 
be printed, kept, or sold. Booksellers of every description shall keep in their 
hbraries a catalogue of the books which they have on sale, signed by the said 
deputies; nor shall they keep or sell, nor in any way dispose of any other 
books, without permission from the deputies, under pain of forfeiting the 
books, and being liable to such other penalties as shall be judged proper by 
the bishop or inquisitor, who shall also punish the buyers, readers, or printers 
of such works. If any person import foreign books into any city, they shall 
be obHged to announce them to the deputies ; or if this kind of merchandise 
be exposed to sale in any public place, the public officers of the place shall 
signify to the said deputies, that such books have been brought ; and no one 
shall presume to orive to read, or lend, or sell, any book which he or any other 
person has brought into the city, until he has shown it to the deputies, and 
obtained their permission, unless it be a work well known to be universally 
allowed. 

" Heirs and testamentary executors shall make no use of the books of the 
deceased, nor in any way transfer them to others, until they have presented 
a catalogue of them to the deputies, and obtained their license, under pain of 



COUNCIL OF TRENT. 497 

the confiscation of the books, or the infliction of such other punishment as the 
bishop or inquisitor shall deem proper, according to the contumacy or quality 
of the delinquent. 

" With regard to those books which the fathers of the present deputation 
shall examine, or correct, or deliver to be corrected, or permit to be reprinted 
on certain conditions, booksellers and others shall be bound to observe what- 
ever is ordained respecting them. The bishops and general inquisitors shall, 
nevertheless, be at liberty, according to the power they possess, to prohibit 
such books as may seem to be permitted by these rules, if they deem it neces- 
sary for the good of the kingdom, or province, or diocess. And let the sec- 
retary of thosQ fathers, according to the command of our holy Father, trans- 
mit to the notary of the generallnquisitor, the names of the books that have 
been corrected, as well as of the persons to whom the fathers have granted 
the power of examination. 

" Finally, it is enjoined on all the faithful, that no one presume to keep or 
read any books contrary to these mles, or prohibited by this index. But if 
any one keep or read any books composed by heretics, or the writings of any 
author suspected of heresy, or false doctrine, he shall instantly incur the sen- 
tence of excommunication ; and those who read or keep works interdicted on 
another account, besides the mortal sin committed, shall be severely punished 
at the will of the bishops." 



Decree of Confirmation. — " So great has been the calamity of these 
times, and the inveterate mahce of the heretics, that no explanations of our 
faith have been given, however clear, nor any decrees passed, however ex- 
press, which, influenced by the enemy of mankind, they have not defiled by 
some error. For which cause the holy council has taken particular care to 
condemn and anathematize the principal errors of the heretics of our age, and 
to dehver and teach the true and Catholic doctrine ; this has been done — the 
council has condemned, anathematized, and defined. But since so many 
bishops, called from different provinces of the Christian world, could be no 
longer absent from their churches without great loss and universal peril to 
the flock — and no hope remained that the heretics would come hither any 
more, after having been so often invited and so long waited for, and having 
received the pledge of safety, according to their desire ; and therefore it was 
necessary to put an end to this holy council ; it now remains that all princes 
be exhorted in the Lord, as they now are, not to permit its decrees to be cor- 
rupted or violated by the heretics, but to ensure their devout reception and 
faithful observance, by them, and by all others. But if any difficulty should 
arise in regard to their reception, or any circumstances occur, which indeed 
are not to be feared, that should render necessary any further explanation or 
definition ; the holy council trusts, that in addition to the remedies already 
appointed, the blessed Roman pontiff" will provide for the exigency, either by 
summoning certain individuals from those provinces in which the difficulty 
shall arise, to whom the management of the business may be confided, or by 
the celebration of a general council, if it be judged necessary, or by some fitter 
method, adapted to the necessities of the provinces, and calculated to promote 
the glory of God, and the good of the church." 
42* 



/- 



EXACT CONFORMITY 

OF 

POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

BY CONYERS MIDDLETON. 



Rome is certainly, of all cities in the world, the most entertaining to stran- 
gers : for whether we consider it in its ancient or present, its civil or ecclesi- 
astical state ; whether we admire the great perfection of arts in the noble 
remains of Old Rome; or the revival of tiie same arts in the beautiful orna- 
ments of modern Rome ; every one, of what genius or taste soever, will be 
sure to find something or other, that will deserve his attention, and engage 
his curiosity : and even those who have no particular taste or regard for all 
things curious, but travel merely for the sake of fashion, and to waste time, 
will spend that time with more satisfaction at Rome, than anv where else ; 
from that easy manner in which they find themselves accommodated with all 
the conveniences of life ; that general civility and respect to strangers ; that 
quiet and security which every man of prudence is sure to find in it. But one 
thing is certainly peculiar to this city ; that though travellers have been so 
copious in their descriptions of it, and there are pubhshed in all parts of Eu- 
rope such voluminous collections of its curiosities, yet it is a subject never to 
be exhausted : since in the infinite variety of entertainment, which it affordsj 
every judicious observer will necessarily find somethini^ or other, that has 
either escaped the searches of others, or will at least afford matter for par- 
ticular and curious remarks. 

The learned Montfaucon, speaking of the villa of Prince Borghese, says, 
"though its antique monuments and rarities have been a hundred times de- 
scribea in print, many more of them still have been overlooked and omitted, 
than are yet publishea." And if this be true of one single collection, what an 
idea must we have of the immense treasure of the same Kind, which the whols 
city is able to furnish 7 

As for my own journey to this place, it was not any motive of devotion, 
which draws so many others hither, that occasioned it. My zeal was not bent 
on visiting the holy thresholds of the apostles, and kissing the feet of their 
successor. I knew that their ecclesiastical antiquities were mostly fabulous 
and legendary ; supported by fictions and impostures, too gro&s to employ the 
attention of a man of sense. For should we allow that Peter had beeru at 
Rome, of which many learned men however have doubted, yet they had not, 
I knew, any authentic monuments remaining of him ; any visible footsteps 
subsisting to demonstrate his residence among them : and should we ask 
them for any evidence of this kind, they would refer to the impression of his 
face on the wall of the dungeon in which he was confined, or to a fountain in 
the bottom of it, raised miraculously by him out of the rock, in order to baptize 
his fellow-prisoners ; or to the mark of our Saviour's feet in a stone, on which 
he appeared to him and stopped him as he was flying out of the city from a 
persecution then faging. In memory of which, there was a church built on 
the spot, called St. Mary delle Pianie, or of the marks of the feet ; which 
falling into decay, was supplied by a chapel, at the expense of our Cardinal 
Pole. But the stone itself, more valuable, as their writers say, than any of 
the precious ones ; being a perpetual monument and proof of the Christian 
religion ; is preserved with all due reverence in St. Sebastian's Church ; where 
I purchased a print of it, with several others of the same kind. Or they would 
appeal perhaps to the evidence of some miracle wrought at his execution ; a5 
they do in the case of St. Paul in a church called, " at the three Fountains;" 
the place where he was beheaded : on which occasion, "instead of blood there 
issued only millc from his veins ; and his head when separated from the body, 
feaying made three jumps upon the ground, raised at each place a spring of 
hving water* v/hich retains still as they would persuade us, the plain taste oi 



POPERY AND PAGANISM. 499 

milk :" of all of which facts we have an account in Baronius, Mabillon, and aM 
their gravest authors ; and may see printed figures of them in the descriptioa 
of modern Rome. 

It was no part of my design, to spend my time abroad, in attending to ridi- 
culous fictions of this kind ; the chief pleasure which 1 proposed to myself 
was, to visit the genuine remains, and venerable reliques of Pagan Rome : the 
authentic monuments of antiquit)^, that demonstrate the certainty of tnose 
histories, which are the entertamment as well as the instmction of our 
younger years ; and which, by the early prejudice of being the first knowledge 
we acquire ; as well as the delight which they give, in describing the lives and 
manners of the greatest men who ever lived, gain so much sometimes upon 
our riper age, as to exclude too often other more useful and necessary studies. 
I could not help flattering myself with the joy that I should have, in viewing 
the very place and scene of those important events, the knowledge and ex 
plication of which have ever since been the chief employment of the learned 
and polite world ; in treading that ground, where at every step we stumble 
on the ruins of some fabric described by the ancients; and cannot help 
setting foot on the memorial of some celebrated action, in which the great 
heroes of antiquity had been personally engaged. I amused myself with the 
thoughts of taking a turn in those very v/alks, where Cicero and his friends 
had held the philosophical disputations,*or of standing on that very spot where 
he had delivered some of his famous Orations. 

Such fancies as these, with which I often entertained myself on my road to 
Rome, are not, I dare say, pecuhar to myself, but common to all men of read- 
ing and education; whose dreams upon a voyage to Italy, hke the descriptions 
of the Elysian fields, represent nothing to their fancies, but the pleasure of 
finding out and conversing with those ancient sages and heroes, whose char- 
acters they have most adiiiired. Nor indeed is this imagination much disap- 
pointed in the event; for Cicero observes, "Whether it be from nature, or 
some weakness in us, it is certain we are much more affected with the sight 
of those places, where great and famous men have spent most part of tneir 
hves, than either to hear of their actions, and read their works ;" and he was 
not, as he tells us, "so much pleased with ancient Athens itself, for its stately 
buildings or exquisite pieces of art, as in recollecting the great men whom it 
had bred; in carefully visiting their sepulchres; and finding out the place 
where each had lived or walked, or held his disputations." This is what every 
man of curiosity will, in the like circumstances, find true in himself; and for 
my own part, as oft as I have been rambling about in the very rostra of old 
Rome, or in that temple of Concord, where TuUy assembled the Senate in 
Catiline's conspiracy; I could not help fancying myself much more sensible 
of the force of his eloquence, v/hilst the impression of the place served to warm 
my imagination to a degree almost equal to that of his old audience. 

As therefore my general studies had furnished me with a competent know- 
ledge of Roman history, as well as an inchnation to search more particularly 
into some branches of its antiquities, so I had resolved to employ myself in 
inquiries of this sort ; and to lose as little time as possible in taking notice of 
the fopperies and ridiculous ceremonies of the present Religion of the place. 
But I soon found myself mistaken ; for the whole form and outward dress of 
their worship seems so grossly idolatrous and extravagant, beyond what I 
had imagined, and made so strong an impression on me, that I could not help 
considering it with a peculiar regard ; especially when the very reason, which 
I thought would have hindered me from any notice of it at all, was the chief 
cause that engaged me to pay so much attention to it ; for nothing, I found, 
concurred so much with my original intention of conversing with the ancients: 
or so much helped my imagination, to find myself wandering about in old 
Heathen Rome, as to observe and attend to their religious worship ; all whose 
ceremonies appear plainly to have been copied from the rituals of primitive 
Paganism; as if handed down by an uninterrupted succession from the priests 
of old, to the priests of new Rome; whilst each of them readily explained, 
and called to my mind some passage of a classic author, where the san»e 
ceremony was described, as transacted in the same form and manner, and in 
the same place where I now saw it executed before my eyes ; so that as oft as 
I was present at anv religious exercise in their Churches, it was more natural 
to fancy myself looking on at some solemn act of idolatry in old Rome, tliaa 



SOO POPERY AND 

asflisiting at a worship instituted on the principles, and founded upon the plan 
of Christianity. 

Many of our divines have, with much learning and solid reasoning, charged 
and eflectually proved the crime of idolatry on the Church of Rome ; but these 
controversies where the charge is denied, and with much subtlety evaded, are 
not capable of giving thai conviction, which I immediately received from my 
senses ; the surest witness of fact m all cases ; and which no man can fail to 
be furnished with, who sees Popery, as it is exercised in Italy, in the full pomp 
and display of its pageantry ; and piactising all its arts and powers without 
caution or reserve. — This similitude of the Popish and Pagan Rehgion, seemed 
so evident and clear, and struck my imagination so forcibly, that I soon re- 
solved to give myself the trouble of searching it to the bottom : and to explain 
and demonstrate the certainty of it, by comparing together the principal and 
most obvious part of each worship : which, as it was my first employment 
afier I came to Rome, shall be the subject of my Letter; showing the source 
and origin of the Popish ceremonies, and the exact conformity of them with 
those of their Pagan ancestors. 

The very first thing that a stranger must necessarily take notice pf, as soon 
as he enters their churches, is the use of incense or perfumes of their religious 
offices; the first step, which he takes within the door, will be sure to make 
him sensible of it. by the offence that he will immediately receive from the 
smell as well as the smoke of this incense; with which the whole Church 
continues filled for some time after every solemn service. A custom received 
directly from paganism ; and which jDresently called to my mmd the old de- 
scriptions of the heathen temples arid altars, which are seldom or never men- 
tioned by the ancients, w-ithout the epithet of perfumed or incensed. 

Thuricremis cum dona imponerit Aris. — Virg. Mn. IV. 453. 486. 

Saepe Jovem vidi cuin jam sua mitere vellet, 
Fuhnina. thure dato sustinuisse raanum. — Ovid. 

In some of their principal churches, where you have before you in one view, 
a great number of altars, and all of them smoking at once with streams of 
incense, how natural it is to imagine one's self transported into the temple of 
»ome heathen deity, or that of the Paphian Venus described by Virgil ; 

Ubi templum illi, centumqiie Sabseo 

Thure calent Arae, sertisque recentibus halant. — Mn. L 420. 

Her hundred alrars there with garlands crowTi'd, 

And richest incense smoking, breathe around 

Sweet odors, &c. 

Under the Pagan emperors, the use of incense for any purpose of religion 
was thought so contrary to the obligations of Christianity, that in their per- 
secutions, the very method of trying and convicting a Christian, was by re- 
quiring him only to throw the least grain of it into the censer, or on the altar. 

Under the Christian emperors, on the other hand, it was looked upon as a 
rite so peculiarly heathenish, that the very places or nouses, where it could be 
proved to have been done, were by a law of Theodosius confiscated to the 
government. Maximus dixit: Thure tantum Decs, Nicander, honorato. 
Nicander, dixit : Gtuomodo potest homo. Christianus lapides et ligna colere, 
Deo rehcto immortah 7 &c. Act. Martyr Nicandri, &c. apud Mabil. Iter. 
Itai. T. 1. Par. 2. p. 247. 

Adeo ut Christianus vere sacrificare crederant, ubi summis digitis pululum 
thuris injecissent Acerram, &c. Durant. de Ritib. 1. I. c..9. 

Non est in eo tantum Servitus Idoli, siquis duobus digituhs Thura in bustum 
arae jaciat. Hieron. Oper. T. 4. Epist. ad Heliod. p. 8. 

In the old bas-reliefs, or pieces of sculpture, where any heathen sacrifice is 
represented, we never fail to see a boy in sacred habit, which was always 
white, attending on the priest, with a little chest or box in his hands in whi<;h 
this incense was kept for the use of the altar. Namque omnia loca, quae 
Thuris constiterit vapore sumasse, si tamen ea fuisse in jure thurificantium 
probabitur, Fisco nostro adsocianda censemus, &c. Jac. Golhof de Stat. 
Pagnor, sub Christian. Imper leg. 12. p. 15. Monlfauc. Antiq. Tom. 2. plate 
93, 24, 25. 

Da mihi Thura, Puer, Pingues facientia Flammas.— Otid. Trist. 5. 5. 



PAGANISM. 501 

And in the same manner still in the church of Rome, there is always a boy 
m surplice waiting on the priest at the altar, with the sacred utensils; among 
the rest, the Thuribulum or vessel of incense, which the priest with many 
ridiculous motions and crossings, waves several tirnes, as it is smoking 
around and over the altar in different parts of the service. 

The next thing that will of course strike one's imagination, is their use of 
the holy water ; for nobody ever goes in or out of a church, but is either 
sprinkled by the priest, who attends for that purpose on solemn days, or else 
serves himself with it from a vessel usually of marble, placed just at the door, 
not unlike to one of our baptismal fonts. Now this ceremony is so notori- 
ously and directly transmitted to them from Paganism, that their own writers 
make not the least scruple to own it. The Jesuit La Cerda, in his notes on a 
passage of Virgil, where this practice is mentioned, says, "Hence was derived 
the custom of the holy Church, to provide purifying of holy water at the en- 
trance of their Churcnes." 

Spargens rore levi, &c. — Virg. ^n. 6. 230. 

Aquaminarium or Amula, says the learned Montfaucon, was a vase of holy 
water, placed by the heathens at the entrance of their temples, to sprinkle 
themselves with. Montfauc. Antiq. T. 2. Pt. 1. 1. 3. c. 6. Eurip. Jone. v. 96. 
The same vessel was by the Greeks called Perirranterion ; two of which, 
the one of gold, the other of silver, were given by Croesus to the temple of 
Apollo at Delphi : Herodot. 1. I. 51 ; Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. 1 ; and the custom 
of sprinkling themselves was so necessary a part of their religious offices, 
that the method of excommunication seems to have been by prohibiting to 
offenders the approach and use of the holy water pot.- (Eschin. Orat. contra 
Ctesiphon. 58. The very composition of this holy water was the samj also 
among the heathens, as it now is among the Papists, being nothing more 
than a mixture of salt with common water ; Porro singulis diebus Dominicis 
sacerdos missae sacrum factarus, aquam sale adspersam, benedicendo revocare 
debet eaque populum adspergere. Durant. de Kit. 1. 1. c. 21 ; and the form of 
the sprinkling-brush, called by the ancients aspersorium or aspergillunit 
which is much the same with what the priests now niake use of, may be seen 
in the bas-reliefs^ or ancient coins, wherever the insignia, or emblems of the 
Pagan priesthood are described, of which it is generally one. Montfauc. Antiq. 
T. 2. P. t. 3. c. 6. It may be seen on a silver coin of Julius Cfesar, as well as 
many other Emperors. Ant. Agostini discorso sopra le Me deglie. 

Platina in his lives of the Popes, and other authors ascribes the institution 
of this holy water to Pope Alexander I., who is said to have lived about the 
year of Christ 113: but it could not be introduced so early, since for some 
ages after, we find the prirnitiye fathers speaking of it as a custom purely hea- 
thenish, condemning it as impious and detestable. Justin Martyr says, " That 
it was invented by daemons in imitation of the true baptism signified by the 
Prophets, that their votaries might also have their pretended purifications by 
water ;" Apol. I. p. 91 ; and the emperor JuHan, out of spite to the Christians, 
used to order the victuals in the markets to be sprinkled with holy water, on 
purpose either to starve, or force them to eat, what by their own principlea 
they esteemed polluted. Hospinian. de Orig. Remplor. 1. 2. c. 25. 

Thus we see what contrary notions the primitive and Romish Church have 
of this ceremony ; the first condemns it as superstition, abominable and 
irreconcilable with Christianity ; the latter adopts it as highly edifying and 
apphcable to the improvement of Christian piety ; the one looks upon it as 
the contrivance of the devil to delude mankind: the other as ihe security 
of mankind against the delusions of the devil. But what is still more ridicu- 
lous than even the cerernony itself, is to see their learned writers ^avely 
reckoning up the several virtues and benefits, derived from the use of it, both 
to the soul and body ; Durant. de Ritib. 1. 1. c. 21. It, Hospin. ; and to crown 
all, producing a long roll of miracles, to attest the certamty of each virtue, 
which they ascribe to it. Hujus aquae benedictae virtus variis miraculis illus- 
tratur, &c. Durant. Why may we not then justly apply to the present people 
of Rome, what was said by the poet of its old inhabitants, for the use of this 
very ceremony 1 

Ah, nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina caedis 
Fluminea tolli pcsse putetis a-qua. — Ovid. Fast. 2. 45. 



POPERY AND 

Ah, easy fools, to think that a whole flood 
Of water e'er can purge the stain of blood I 

I do not at present recollect whether the ancients went so far as to apply 
the use of this holy water to the purifying or blessing their horses, asses, and 
other cattle ; or whether this be an improvement of modern Rome, which has 
dedicated a yearly festival, pecuharly to this service, called in their vulgar lan- 
guage, the benediction of horses; which is always celebrated with so much 
solemnity in the month of January ; when all the inhabitants of the neigh- 
borhood send up their horses, asses, c&:c. to the convent of St. Anthony, near 
St, Mary the Great, where a priest in surplice at the church dour, sprinkles, 
with his brush, all the animals singly, as they are presented to him, and receives 
from each owner a gratuity proportionable to his zeal and -ability. Ma ogni 
forte d'animali a questo santo si raccommanda, e pero nel giorno della sua 
festa sono portate molte oferte a questa sua chiefa, in gralitudine delle gratie, 
che diversihanno ottenute da lui sopra de'loro bestiami. Rom. modern, Giorn. 
6. c. 45. Rion de Monti- Amongst the rest, 1 had my own horses blest at the 
expense of about eighteen pence of our money ; as v^'ell to satisfy my own 
curiosity, as to humor the coachman ; who was persuaded, as the common 
people generally are, that some mischance would befall them v\^ithin the year» 
if they wanted "this benediction, Mabillon, in giving an account of this func- 
tion, of which he happened also to be an eye-witness, makes no other reflec- 
tion upon it, than that it was new and unusual to him. In Festo Sancli An- 
tonii prope S. Mariam Majorem, riius nobis insolitus visus est, ut quicquid 
equorum est in urbe ducantur cum suis phaleris ad portera ecclesise, ubi aqua 
lustrah ab uno e patribus omnes et singuh aspcrguntur, dato annuo censu. 
Mabil. It. Ital- p. 136. I have met, indeed, with some hints of a practice not 
foreign to this, among the ancients ^ of sprinkling their horses with water in 
the Circensian Games. Rubenii Elect. 2. 18. But whether this was done out 
of a superstitious view of inspiring any virtue, or purifying them for those ra- 
ces, which w^ere esteemed sacred ; or merely to refresh them under the vio- 
lence of such an exercise, is not easy to determine. But allowing the Romish 
Eriests to have taken the hint from som,e old custom of Paganism ; yet this, 
_ owever, must be granted to them, that they alone were capable of cultivat- 
ing so coarse and barren a superstition, into a revenue sufiicient for the main- 
tenance of forty or fifty idle monks. 

No sooner is a man advanced a little forward into their Chttrches, and be- 
gins to look about him, but he will find his eyes and attention attracted by a 
number of lamps and wax candles, which are kept constantly burning before 
the shrines and images of their Saints. In the great churches of Italy, says 
Mabillon, they hang up lamps at every altar ; a sight which not only surprises 
a stranger by the novelty of it, but will furnish him with another proof and 
example of the conformiity of the Romish with the Pagan worship ; by recalt- 
ing to his memory many passages of the heathen writers where then- perpe- 
tual lamps and candles are described as continually burning before the altars 
and statuesof their deities. Ad singulas ecclesias aras, quiritusin omnibus Italics 
Easilicis observatiir, singulse appensee sunt Lampades. Mabil. It. Ital. p. 25. 

Placuere et Lychnuchi pensiles in delubris.— Plin Hist. Nat 1. 34. 3. 

Cupidinem argentenm cum Lampade. — Cic. in Verr. 2. 

Centum aras posait, vigilemqiie sacraverat ignem. — Virg. ^n. 4. 200. 

Herodotus tells us of the Egyptians, w^ho first introduced the use of lamps 
into their temples. Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. I. c. 16. That they had a famous 
yearly festival, called from the principal ceremony of it, the lighting up of 
candles, but there is scarcely a single festival at Rome, which rnight not for 
the same reason be called by the same name. 

The primitive writers frequently expose the folly and absurdity of this hea- 
thenish custom. Hospin. de Orig. Templor. I. 2. 22. They hght up candles to 
God, says Lactantius, as if he lived in the dark ; and do they not deserve to 
pass for madmen, who offer lamps to the author and giver of light 7 

In the collections of old inscriptions, we find many instances of presents 
and donations froni private persons, of lamps and candlesticks to the temples 
and altars of their ods. Cupidines 11. cum suis Lychnuchis ei Lucerna. 
Grut. Insc. 177. 3. A piece of zeal, which continues still the same in modern 
Rome, where each church abounds with lamps of massy silver, and some- 
times even of gold ; tlie gifts of princes, and ether persons of distinction : and 



PAGANISM. 603 

!t is sui-prisiiig to s«e, how great a number of this kind are perpetually before 
the altars of their principal saints, or miraculous images ; as St. Anthony of 
Padua, or the lady of Loretto ; as well as the vast profusion of wax candles, with 
which their churches are illuminated on every great festival when the high al- 
tar covered with gold and silver plate, brougiit out of their treasuries, and 
stuck full of wax-lights, disposed in beautiful figures, looks more like the rich 
sideboard of some great Prince, dressed out for a feast, than an altar to pay 
divine worship at. 

But a stranger will not be more surprised at the number of lamps or wax* 
lights, burning before their altars, than at the number of offerings or votive 
gifts which are hanging all around them, in consequence of vows, made in the 
time of danger ; and in gratitude for deliverance and cures wrought in sick- 
ness or distress ; a practice so common among the heathens, that no one cus- 
torn of antiquity is so frequently mentioned by all their writers ; and many of 
their original donaria, or votive offerings are preserved to tnis day in the cabi- 
nets of the curious; images of metal, stone, or clay, as well as legs, arms, and 
other parts of the body;, which had formerly been'hung up in their temples in 
testimoay of some divine favor or cure effected by their titular deity in that 
particular member. Montfauc. Antiquit. T. 2. p. 1. 1. 4. c. 4. 5. 6. But the 
most common of all offerings were pictures representing the history of the mi- 
raculous cure or dehverance, vouchsafed upon the vow of the donor. 

Nunc dea, nunc succurre mihi ; nam posse 

Picta docet templis multatabelia tuis. — Tibul. El. I. 3. 

Now, goddess, help, for thou can'st help bestow ; 
As all these pictures round thy altars show. 

A friend of Diagoras the philosopher, called the Atheist, having found him 
once in a temple, as the story is told by Cicero, Nat. Deor. 1. 3. 253, "You," 
says he, '' who think the gods take no notice of human affairs, do you not 
see hereby this number of pictures, how many people, for the sake of their 
vows, have been saved in storms at sea and got safe into harbour?" "Yes," 
says Diagoras, " I see how it is, for those are never painted who happen to be 
drowned." The temples of Esculapius were more especially rich in those of- 
ferings, which Livy says— Cum dovis dives erat, qua? remediorum satutarium 
segri mercedem sacraverant Deo. Liv. 1. 45, 28— were the price and pay for 
the cures that he had v/rought for the sick ; where they used always to hang 
up and expose to common view, in tables of brass or marble, a catalogue of 
all the miraculous cures, which he had performed for his votaries ; Strabo, 
T. 1. 515; a remarkable fragment of one of these tables is still remaining 
and published in Grutei's Collections, ^haviiig been found in the ruins of a 
temple of that god, in the island of the Tiber at Rome : upon which the 
learned Montfaucon makes this reflection : that in , it are either seen the 
wiles of the devil, to deceive the credulous ; or else the tricks of Pagan Priests, 
suborning men to counterfeit diseases and miraculous cures. Gruter. Inscript. 
p. 41. Montfauc. Antiq. T. 2.. p. 1. 4. c. 6. 

Now this piece of superstition had been found of old so beneficial to the 
priesthood, that it could not fail of bein^ taken into the scheme of the Romish 
worship ; where it reigns at this day in its full height and vigor, as in the 
ages of pagan Idolatry ; and in so gross a manner, as to give scandal and 
offence even to some of their own communion. Polydore Virgil, after having 
described this practice of the ancients, "in the same manner," says he, "do 
we now offer up in our Churches httle images of wax ; and as oft as any part of 
the body is hurt, as the hand or foot, &c., we presently make a vow to God, 
or one of his Saints, to whom, upon our recovery, we make an offering of 
that hand or foot in wax ; which custom is now come to that extrava^rance, 
that we do the same thing for our cattle which we do for ourselves, and make 
offe'-ings on account of our oxen, horses, sheep ; where a scrupulous man 
will question, in this we imitate the religion or the superstition of our ances- 
tors." Pol. Virg. de Inv. Rer. 1. 5. 1. 

The altar of St. Phihp Neri, says Baronius, "shines with votive pictures 
and images, the proofs of as many miracles ; receiving every day the additional 
lustre of fresh offerings from those who have been favored with fresh bene- 
fits i'' amongst whom the present Pope himself pays, as I have been ^Id, m 



504 POPERY AND 

yearly acknowledgment, for a miraculous deliverance, that he obtained by the 
invocation of this Saint when he had like to have perished under the ruins of 
a house, overturned in an earthquake. Ann. 1. An. 57. n. 162. It. Aring. Rom. 
Subter. 1. 1. c. 30. it. 1. 6. 27. 

This Philip Neri is a Saint in high esteem in all parts of Italy, v/here he 
has many churches dedicated to him : he was founder of the congregation of 
the oratory, and died about a century and a half ago : his altar, with the fol- 
lowing inscription, is in a fine Church called Chiesa A'ouva, which was founded 
and built for the service of his congregation ; where we see his picture by 
Guido, and his statue by Algardi. Cardinal Earonius, who was one of his dis- 
ciples, lies buried too in the same Church. 

CORPVS 
S. PHILIPPI NERII CONGR. VATVRII 

FVNDATVRIS 

AB IPSO DORMITIONIS DIE ANNOS 

aVATOR ET aVADRAGINTA 

INCORRVPTVM DTVINA 

VIRTVTE SERVaTVM OCVLIS FIDELIVM 

EXPOSITVM A DELECTIS IN CHRISTO 

PILIIS SUB EIVSDEM S. PATSIS ALTARI 

PERPETVAE SEPVLTVRAE MORE MAIORVM 

COMENDATVM EST 
ANNO SALVTIS. M.DC.XXXVIIL 

There is commonly so great a number of those offerings hanging up in their 
Churches, that instead of adding beauty they give offence, by covering and 
obstructing the sight of something more valuable and ornamental ; which we 
find to have been the case likewise in the old heathen temples ; where the 
priests were obhged sometimes to take them down, for the obstruction, which 
they gave to the beauty of a fine pillar or altar. Ab his columnis, quae in- 
commode opposita videbantur, signa amovit, &c. Liv. 1. 40. 51. For they 
consist chiefly of arms and legs, and httle figures of wood or wax, but espe- 
cially pieces of board painted, and sometimes indeed fine pictures, describing 
the manner of the deliverance obtained by the miraculous interposition of the 
Saint invoked ; of which offerings, the blessed Virgin is so sure always to 
carry off the greatest share, that it may truly be said of her, what Juvenal says 
of the goddess Isis, whose religion was at that time in the greatest vogue at 
Rome, that the painters got their livelihood out of her. 

Pictores quis necit ab Iside pasci 1 
As once to Isis, now it may be said, 
That painters to the Virgin owe their bread. 

As oft as I have had the curiosity to lopk over those Donaria, or votive of- 
ferings, hanging round the shrines of their images, and consider the several 
stories of each, as they are either expressed in painting, or related in writing, 
I have always found them to be mere copies, or verbal translations of the 
originals of Heathenism ; for the vow is often said to have been divinely in- 
spired, or expressly commanded ; and the cure and deliverance to have been 
wrought either by the visible apparhion, and immediate hand of the titular 
Saint, or by the notice of a dream, or some other miraculous admonition from 
heaven. "There can be no doubt," say their writers, "but that the images 
of our Saints often work signal miracles, by procuring health to the infirm, 
and appearing to us often in dreams, to suggest something of great moment 
for our service." 

And what is all this, but a revival of the old impostures, and a repetition of 
the same old stories of which the ancient inscriptions are full, with no other 
difference than what the Pagans ascribe to the imaginary help of their deities, 
the Papists as foohshly impute to the favor of their Saints '? As may be seen 
by the few instances, that I have subjoined, out of the great plenty, which all 
'!KK>k6 of antiquities will furnish : and whether the reflection of Father Mont- 



PAGANISM. 



5b5 



faucon on the Pagan priests, mentioned above, be not, in the verjr same case, 
as justlv applicable to the Roman priests, I must leave to the judgment of 
my reacier. 

But the gifts and offerings of the kind, that I have been speaking of, are the 
fruits only of vulgar zeal, and the presents of inferior people ; whilst princes 
and great persons, as it used to be of old — Consul Apollino, ^sculapio, Saluti 
dona vovere, et dare signa inaurata jussus : quae vovit, deditque. Liv. I. 40, 37. — 
frequently make offerings of large vessels, lamps, and even statues of massy 
silver ana gold ; with diamonds, and all sorts of precious stones of incredible 
value ; so that the church of Loretto is now become a proverb for its riches 
of this sort, just as Apollo's temple at Delphi was with the ancients on the 
same account. 

Nor all the wealth Apollo's temple holds 
Can purchase one day's life, &c. — U. 404. 

In the same treasury of that holy house j one part consists, as it did like- 
wise among the heathens, of a wardrobe. For the very idols, as Tertullian 
observes, used to be dressed out in curious robes, of the choicest stuffs and 
fashion. Cum ipsis etiam Idohs induantur praetextae et trabeae, &c. De Idolat. 
p. 116. While they were showing us therefore the great variety of rich habits, 
with which that treasury abounds ; some covered with precious stones, others 
more curiously embroidered by such a queen, or princess, for the use of the 
miraculous image; I could not help recollecting the picture which old Homer 
draws of Queen Hecuba of Troy, prostrating herself before the miraculous 
image of Pallas, with a present of the richest and best wrought gown, that 
she was mistress of. 

A gown she chose, the best and noblest far, 

Sparkling with rich embroidery, like a star, &c. — II. 293. 

The mention of Loretto puts me in mind of the surprise that I was in. at 
the first sight of the holy image : for its face is as black as a negro's ; so tnat 
one would take it rather for the representation of a Proseipine, or mfernal deity, 
than, what they impiously style it, of the Queen of heaven. But I soon recol- 
lected that this very circumstance of its complexion, made it but resemble the 
more exactly the old idols of Paganism, which, in sacred as well as profane 
writers, are described to be black with the perpetual smoke of lamps and in- 
cense. Baruch. 6. 19, 21. Arnob. 1. 6. 

When a man is once engaged in reflections of this kind, imagining himself 
in some heathen temple, andT expecting, as it were, some sacrifice, or other 
piece of Paganism to ensue, he will not be long in suspense, before he sees 
the finishing act and last scene of genuine idolatry, in crowds of bigot votaries, 
prostrating themselves before some image of wood or stone, and paying divine 
honors to an idol of their own erecting. Should thev squabble with us here, 
about the meaning of the word. Idol, Jerome has determined it to the very 
case in question, telling us, that by idols afe""to be understood the images of 
the dead : Idola intelligimus Imagines mortuorum. Hier. Com. in Isa. c. 
xxxvii; and'IfhF'wofsllTppers of sucTi images are lised always in the style of 
the fathers, as terms synonymous and equivalent to Heathens and Pagans. 
Innumeri sunt in Graecia exterisque nationibus^ qui se in discipulatum Cnristi 
tradiderunt, non sine ingenti odio eorum qui snnulacra venerantur. Pamphili 
Apol. pro Orig. Hieron. Op. Tom. 5. p. 233. 

As to the practice itself, it was condemned by many of the wisest heathens, 
and for several ages, even in Pagan Rome, was thought impious and detesta- 
ble : for Numa, we find, prohibited it to the old Romans, nor would suffer any 
images in their temples : which constitution they observed religiously, says 
Plutarch, Plutar. in Vit. Num. p. 65. C, for the first hundred and seventy 
years of the city. But as image worship was thought abominable even by 
some Pagan princes, so by some of the Christian emperors it was forbidden 
on pain of death : Poenae capitis subjugari praecipimus, quos simulacra colere 
constiterit. Gothof. Comment, de statu Pagan, sub. Christian. Imperatorib. 
Leg. 6. p. 7 ; not because those images were the representations of demons, 
or false gods, but because they were vain, senseless idols, the work of men's 
hands, and for that reason unworthy of any honor : and all the instances and 
overt acts of such worship, described ana condemned by them, are exactly 
43 



506 POPERY AND 

the same with what the Papists practise at this da^^: hghting up candles; 
burning incense ; hanging up garlands, &lc. as may be seen in the law o* 
Theodosius before mentioned ; which confiscates that house or land, where 
any such act of Gentile superstition had been committed. In nulla urbe sensu 
carentibus simulacris, vel accendat lumina, imponat thura, serta suspendal. 

Si quis vero mortaU opere facta, et sevum passura simulacra imposito thure 
venerabitur — is ntpote violatae religionis reus, ea domo seu possessione multa- 
bitur, in qua eum constiterit gentilitia superstitione famulatum. Leg. 12. p. ^5. 
Those princes, who were influenced, we may suppose, in their constitutions of 
this sort, by the advice of their bishops, did not think Paganism abolished, 
till the adoration of images was utterly extirpated; which was reckoned al- 
ways the principal of those Gentile rites, that agreeably to the sense oi the 
purest ages of Christianity, are never mentioned m the imperial laws, without 
the epithets of profane, damnable, impious, &c. Leg. 17. 20. 

What opinion then can we have of the present practice of the church of 
Rome, but that by a change only of name, they have found means to retain 
the thing; and by substituting their saints in the place of the old demigods, 
have but set up idols of their own, instead of those of their forefathers'? 
In which it is hard to say, whether their assurance, or their address is more 
to be admired, who have the face to make that the principal part of Christian " 
worship, which the first Christians looked upon as the most criminal part 
even of Paganism, and have found means to extract gain and great revenues 
out of a practice, which in primitive times would have cost a man both his life 
and estate. 

f But our notion of the idolatry of modern Rome v. ill be much heightened 
still and confirmed, as oft as we follow them into those temples, and to those 
very altars which were built originally by their heathen ancestors, the old 
Romans, to the honor of their Pagan deities ; where we shall hardly see any 
other alteration, than the shrine of some old hero filled by the meaner statue 
of some modern saint. Nay, they have not alwavs, as I am well informed, 
given themselves the trouble of making even this change, but have been con- 
tent sometimes to take up with the old image, just as they found it; after 
baptizing it only, as it were^ or consecrating it anew, by the imposition of a 
Christian name. This their antiquaries do not scruple to put strangers in mind 
of, in showing their churches ; and it was, I think, in that of St. Agnes, 
where they showed me an antique of a young Bacchus, which with a new 
name, and some httle change of drapery, stands now worshipped under the 
title of a female saint. 

Tully reproaches Clodius, for having pubhcly dedicated the statue of a com- 
mon strumpet, under the name and title of the Goddess of Liberty, a practice 
still frequent with the present Romans; who have scarce a fine imaa^e or pic- 
ture of a female saint, Vv-hich is not said to have been designed originally by 
the sculptor, or painter, for the representation of his own mistress ; and who 
dares, may we say ironically with the old Romans, to violate such a g9ddess 
as this— the statue of a whore ? Hanc Deam quisquam violire audeat, imagi 
nem meretricis 7 Cic. pro Dom. 43. 

The noblest heathen temple now remaining in the world, is the Pantheon or 
Rotunda; which, as the inscription over the portico informs us, having been 
impiously dedicated of old by Agrippa to Jove and all the gods, was impious- 
ly reconsecrated by Pope Boniface IV., to the blessed Virgin and all the 
Saints. 

PANTHEON, &c. 

Ab Agrippa Augu.sti Genero 
Impie Jovi, Cseterisq ; Mendacibus Diis 

A. Bonifacio IlIL Pontifice 

Deipars} & S. S. Christi Martyribus Pio 

Dicatum, &c. 

With this single alteration, it serves as exactly for all the purposes of the 
Popish, as it did for the Pagan worship, for which it was built. For as in the 
olcl temple, ever/ one might find the God of his country, and address himself 
to that deity, whose rehgion he was most devoted to ; so it is the same thing 



I 



PAGANISM. 507 

now ; every one chooses the patron whom he likes best ; and one may see 
here different services going on at the same time at different altars, w^itn dis- 
tinct congregations around them, just as the inclinations of the people lead 
them, to the worship of this or that particular Saint. 

And what better title can the new demigods show, to the adoration now 
paid to them, than the old ones, whose shrines they have usurped 7 Or how 
comes it to be less criminal to worship images, erected by the Pope, than 
th6se which Agrippa, or that which Nebuchadnezzer set up 7 If there be any 
real difference, most people, I dare say, will be apt to determine in favor of the 
old possessors. For those heroes of antiquity were raised up into Gods, and 
received divine honors, for some signal benefits, of which they had been the 
authors to mankind ; as the invention of arts and sciences ; or of something 
highly useful and necessary to life. Suscepit autem vita hominum, consuetu- 
doque communis, ut beneficio excellentes viros in coelum fama, et voluntate 
tolferent, &c. Cic. Nat. Deor. 1. 2. 223. 

Imitantem Herculem ilium, quem hominum fama, beneficiorum memor, in 
concilium coelestium collocavit. Off. 3. 299. Whereas of the Romish Saints, it is 
certain, that many of them were never heard of, but in their own legends or 
fabulous histories ; and many more, instead of services done to mankind, own 
all the honors no vv paid to them, to their vices or their errors ; whose merjs 
like that of Demetrius, Acts xix. 23, was their skill of raising rebellions in 
defence pf an idol, and throwing kingdoms into convulsions, for the sake of 
some gainful imposture. 

And as it is in the Pantheon, it is just the same in all the other heathen 
temples, that still remain in Rome ; they have only pulled down one idol, to 
set up another; and changed rather the name, than the object of their wor- 
ship. Thus the little temple of Vesta, near the Tiber, mentioned by Horace, 
Carm. 1. 1. 2, is now possessed by the Madonna of the Sun ; Rom. Mod. Gior. 
2. Rione di Ripa. 5, that of Fortuna Virilis, by Mary the Egyptian ; that of 
Saturn, Gior. 5. Rione di Campitelli. 15, where the public treasure was an- 
ciently kept, by St. x4drian ; that of Romulus and Remus in the Via Sacra, by 
two other brothers, Cosmas and Damianus ; 

Urbanus VIII. Pont. Max. Templum Geminis 

Urbis Conditoribus Siiperstiose dicatum 

A. Felice IIII. S. S. Cosm« et Damiano Fratribus 

Pie Consecratuin, vetustate Labefactatum, 

In splendidiorem Formam Redegit. 

Ann. Sal. M,DCXXXIII. 

That of Antonine the Godly, by Laurence the Saint; but for my part I should 
sooner be tempted to prostrate myself before the statue of a Romulus or an 
Antonine, than that of a Laurence or a Damian ; and give divine honors 
rather with Pagan Rome, to the founders of empires, than with Popish Rome, 
to the founders of monasteries. -4 

At the foot of Mount Palatin, in the way between the Forum and Circus 
Maximus, on the very spot, where Romulus was believed to have been suckled 
by the wolf, there stands another Uttle round temple, dedicated to him in the 
early times of the republic, into which for the present elevation of the soil with- 
out, we now descend by a great number of steps. It is mentioned by Dionysius 
Halicarnassus, who says, that in his time there stood in it a bizazen statue of 
antique work, of the wolf giving suck to the infant brothers, 1. 1. 64 ; which 
is thought by many to be the same, which is still preserved and shown in the 
capitol : though I take this rather, which now remains, to have been another of 
the same kind, that stood originally in the capitol, and is mentioned by Cicero 
to have been there struck with hghtning; Tactus est etiam ille, qui hancurbem 
condidit, Romulus, quem inauratum in CapitoHo parvum atque lactantem, 
uberibus lupinis inhiantem fuisse meministis. Orat. in Catil. 3 ; of which it 
retains to this day the evident marks in one of its hinder legs. It is however 
to one or the other of those celebrated statues, that Virgil, as Servius assures 
us, alludes in that elegant description : 

— Geminos Imic ubera circum 



LTidere pendentes pueros et lambere matrem 

Impavidos : Illam tereti cervice reflexam 

Mulcere alternos, et iingere corpora lingua.— En. 8. 631. 



508 POPERY AND 

The martial twins beneath their mother layf 
And hanging on her dugs, with wanton play, 
Securely suck'd; whilst she reclined her head 
To lick their tender limbs, and form them as they fed. 

From the tradition of the wonderful escape, \vhich Romulus had in this 
very place, when exposed in his infancy to perish in the Tiber ; as soon as he 
came to be a god, he v/as looked upon as singularly propitious to the health 
and safety of young children : from which notion, it became a practice for 
nurses and mothers, to present t]ieir sickly infants before his shrine in this 
little temple in confidence of a cure or relief by his favor. Giornato 2da. c. 36. 
Rione de Ripa. Now when this temple was converted afterwards into a 
church ; lest any piece of superstition should be lost, or the people think them- 
selves sufferers by the change, in losing the benefit of such a protection for 
their children ; care was taken to find out in the place of the Heathen God, a 
Christian Saint, who had been exposed too in his infancy, and found by 
chance like Romulus ; and for the same reason, might be presumed to be just 
as fond of children, as their old deity had been ; and thus the worship paid to 
Romulus, being now transferred to Theodorus, the old superstition still sub- 
sists, and the custom of presenting children at this shrine continues to this 
day without intermission; of which I myself have been a witness, having 
seen, as oft as I looked into this church, ten or a dozen women decently 
dressed, each with a child in her lap, sitting with silent reverence before the 
altar of the Saint, in expectation of his miraculous influence on the health of 
the infant. 

In consecrating these heathen temples to Popish worship, that the change 
might be the less offensive, and the old superstition as little shocked as possi- 
ble, they generally observed some resemblance of quality and character in the 
saint whom they substituted to the old deity : "If in converting the profane 
worship of the Gentiles, says the describer of modern Rome— Si nel rivoltare 
il profano culto de GentiU nel saero e vero, osservarono i fideli qualche pro- 
■ portione, gui la ritrovarono assai conveniente nel dedicare a Maria Virgine 
tin Tempio, chera della bona Dea. Rom. Mod. Gior. 2. Rion. di Ripa. 10, — 
to the pure and sacred worship of the church, the faithful use to follow 
some rule and proportion, the^r have certainly hit upon it here, in dedicating 
to the Madonna, or holy Virgin, the temple formerly sacred to the Bona 
Dea, or good Goddess.'* But they have more frequently on those occasions 
had regard rather to a simihtude of name between the old and new idol. 
Thus in a place formerly sacred to Apollo, there now stands the church of 
ApoUinaris ; built there as they tell us, La Chiesa di S. ApoUinari fu fabbricata 
inquesto luogo d'Christiani; affinche il profano nome d'Apolline fusse con- 
vertito nel santo nome di questo glorioso Martire. Gio. 3. 21 ; that the profane 
name of that deity might be converted into the glorious name of this martyr : 
and where there anciently stood a temple of Mars, they have erected a church 
to Martina with this Inscription : 

Martirii gestans virgo Martina coronam, 
Ejecto hine Martis numine, Mempla tenet. 

Mars hence expell'd ; Martina, martyr'd maid, 
Claims now the worship, which to him was paid. 

In another place, I have taken notice of an altar erected to St. Baccho z 
Gior. 6. 37; and in their stories of their saints, have observed the names of 
Quirinus, Romula, and Redempta, Concordia, Nympha, Mercurius : Aring. 
Rom. Subt. 1. 2. 21. 1. 3. 12. 1. 4. 16. 22. 1. 5. 4 ; which, though they may, for 
any thing that I know, have been the genuine names of Christian martyrs, 
yet cannot but give occasion to suspect, that some of them at least have been 
formed out of a corruption of the old names ; and that the adding of a modern 
termination, or Itahanizing the old name of a deity, has given existence to 
some of their present saints. Thus the corruption of the word Soracte, the 
old name of a mountain mentioned by, Horace, Carm. 1. 1. 9, in sight of 
Rome has, according to Addison, added one Saint to the Roman Calendar; 
being now softened. Travels from Pesaro, &c. to Rome, because it begins 
with an S, into St. Oreste; in whose honor a monastery i^ founded on the 
place. A change very natural, if we consider that the title of Saint is never 
written by the Italians at length, but expressed commonly by the single letter 
S, SiM S. Oracte : and thus this holy mountain stands now under the prot^- 



PAGANISM. 509 

tion of a patron, whose being and power is just as imaginary, as that of its 
old guardian Apollo. 

Santi custos Soractis Apollo — Vir. En. 9. 

No suspicion of this kind will appear extravagant to those \vho are at all ac- 
quainted with the history of Popery ; which abounds with instances of the 
grossest forgeries both of saints and reliques, which, to the scandal of many 
even among themselves, have been imposed for genuine on the poor ignorant 
people. Uunam hanc religionem imitarentur, qui sanctorum recens absque 
certis nominibus inventorum fictas historias comminiscuntur ad confusionem 
verarum historiarum, imo et qui Paganorum Inscriptiones aliquanda pro 
Christianis vulgant, &c. Mabill. Iter. Ital. p. 225. It is certain, that in the 
earlier ages of Christianity, the Christians often made free with the sepul- 
chral stones of heathen monuments, which being ready cut to their hands, 
they converted to their own use ; ana turning downwards the side, on which 
the old epitaph was engraved, used either to inscribe a new one on the other 
side, or leave it perhaps without any inscription at all, as they are often found 
in the catacombs 9f Rome. Ab immanibus enim et pervetustis superstiti9saB 
urbis constructionibus atque sepulchris ad suos obtigendos tumulos Christiani 
lapides non raro auferre consueverant. Aring. Rom. Subt. 1. 3. c. 22. Now. 
this one custom has frequently been the occasion of ascribing martyrdom ana 
saintshin to persons and names of mere pagans. 

Mabillon gives a remarkable instance of it in an old stone, found on the 
grave of a Christian with this inscription. 

D. M. 

IVLIA EVODIA 

FILIA FECIT. 

MATRI. 

And because in the same grave there was found likewise a glass vial, or 
lacrymatory vessel, tinged with a reddish color, which they call blood ; Si forte 
rubore quodam in imo tincta vitrea ampulla fuerit, pro argumento Martyrii 
habetur. Mont. Dian It. p. 118 ; and look upon as a certain proof of martyr- 
dom ; that Juha Evodia, though undoubtedly a heathen, was presently adopted 
both for saint and martyr, on the authority of an inscription, that appears 
evidently to have been one of those above-mentioned, and borrovved from a 
heathen sepulchre. But whatever the party there buried might have been, 
whether heathen or Christian ; it is certain, however, that it could not be 
Evodia herself, but her mother only, whose name is not there signified. 

The same author mentions some original papers, which he found in the 
Barbarine library, giving a pleasant account of a negociation between the 
Spaniards and Pope Urban VIIL, in relation to this yery subject. Alterum 
notatu dignum, quod Urbanus ab Hispanis quibusdam interpellatus de conce- 
dendis indulgentiis ob cnltum Sancti, cui nomen VIAR, &c. allatus est lapis 
in quo bee literag reliquse erant S. VIAR, &c. Mabill. Iter. Ital. p. 145. The 
Spaniards, it seems, have a Saint, held in great reverence in some parts of 
Spain, called Viar ; for the farther encouragement of whose worship they 
solicited the Pope to grant some special indulgencies to his altars ; and upon 
the Pope's desiring to be better acquainted first with his character, and the 
proofs, which they had of his saintship, they produced a stone with these 
antique letters, S. VIAR, which the antiquaries readily saw to be a small frag- 
ment of some old Roman inscription, in memory of one, who had been PrcR' 
fectuS VIARwm, or oversrer over all the hiajhways. 

But we have in England an instance still more ridiculous, of a fictitious 
saintship, in the case of a certain saint, called Amphibolus ; who, according 
to our Monkish historians, was Bishop of the Isle of Man, and fell martyr 
and disciple of St. Alban, Yet the learned Archbishop Usher has given good 
reasons to convince us, that he owes the honour of his saintship to a mistaken 
passage in the old acts or legends of St. Alban: Usser. de Britan. Ecclea. 
primord. c. 14. p. 539. It. Floyd's Histor. Ace. of Church Government in 
Great Britaiuj c. 7. p. 151. where the Amphibolus mentioned, and since rever- 
enced as ff-samt and martyr, was nothing more than the cloak, which Alban 
happened to have, at the time cl'his execution ; being a word derived from the 



510 POPERY AND 

Greek, and signifying a rough shaggy cloak, which ecclesiastical persons 
usually wore in that age. 

They pretend to show us at Rome, two original impressions of our Savior's 
face, on two different handkerchiefs ; the one, sent a present by himself to 
Agbarus, Prince of Edessa, who by letter had desired a picture of him • 
the other, given by him at the time of his execution, to a saint or holy woman, 
Veronica, upon a handkerchief, which she had lent him to wipe his face on 
that occasion : both which handkerchiefs are still preserved, as they affirm, 
and now kepi wath the utmost reverence : the first in St. Silvester's Church ; 
the second m St. Peter's ; where in honour of this sacred relique, there is a 
fine altar btdlt by Pope Urban VIII,, with the statue of Veronica herself, with 
the following inscription. 

SALVATORIS IMAGINEM VERONICiE 

SVDARIO EXCEPTAM 

VT LOCI MAIESTAS DECENTER 

CVSTODIRET URBANVS VIII. 

PONT. MAX. 

MARMOREVM SIGNVM 

ET ALTARE ADDITIT CONDITORIVM 

EXTRVXIT ET ORNAVIT. 

Aring. Rom. Subterran. Tom. p. 453. There is a prayer in their book of 
offices, ordered by the rubric, to be addressed to this sacred and miraculous 
picture, in the following terms. — ' Conduct us, O thou blessed figure, to our 
proper home, where we may behold the pure face of Christ.' — Conform, of 
Anc. & Mod. Ceremonies, p. 158. 

But notwithstanding the authority of this Pope, and his inscription, this 
VERONICA, as one of their best authors has shown, like Amphibolus, be- 
fore-mentioned, was not any real person, but the name given to the picture 
itself by old writers, who mention it ; being formed by blundering and con- 
founding the words VERA. ICON, or true image, the title inscribed perhaps, 
or given originally to the handkerchief, by the first contrivers of the irnpos- 
ture. Hsec Christi Imago a recentioribus VERONICAE dicitur : imaginem 
ipsam veteres VERONICAM appellabant, &c. Mabill. Iter. Ital. p. 88. 

These stories, however, as fabulous and childish as they appear to men of 
sense, are yet urged by grave authors in defence of their image-worshij), as 
certain proofs of its divine origin, and sufficient to confound all the impious 
opposers of it. Imaginem banc ab Edessenoruni civitate translatam, condigno 
ad hsec usque tempora venerationis cultu in D. Silvestri exciesia, veluti divinum 
quid et perenne sacrarum imaginum monumentum, pariter ac propugnaculum 
adversus insanos Iconoclastas asservari, et suspiciendam fidelibus adoran- 
damque proponi. 

Sacrosancta autem Redemptoris Imago, gemmarum Thesauris quibusque 
longe anteserenda, in Vaticana Basilica, quo par est venerationis cultu asser- 
vatur. Aring. Rom. Subt. T. 21. 1. 5. c. 4. ' 

Effigie piu d'ogni altra sublime e adoranda, per esser non fattura di mano 
Angelica o'd'humana, ma del Fattor medesimo degli Angeh et degh huomini. 
Rom. Mod. Gior. 1 Rion. di Bor. 

I shall add nothing more on this article, than that whatever worship was 
paid by the ancients to their heroes or inferior deities, the Romanists now pay 
the same to their saints and martyrs ; as their own inscriptions plainly de- 
clare; which, lilte those mentioned above of St. Martina, and the Pantheon, 
generally signify that the honors, which of old had been impiously given in 
that place to the false god, are now piously and rightly transferred to the 
Christian saint : or as one of their celebrated Poets expresses himself in re- 
gard to St. George : 

Ut Martem Latii, sic nos Te, Dive Georgia 
Nunc dolimus, dfc. — Mantuan. 

As Mars our fathers once adored, so now 

To thee, O George, we humbly prostrate bow. 



PAGANISM. 511 

And every where through Italy, one sees their sacred inscriptions speaking 
the pure language of Paganism, and ascribing the same powers, characters, 
and attributes, to their saints, which had formerly been ascribed to their hea- 
then gods ; as the few here exhibited will evince. 

Popish Inscriptions. Pagan Inscriptions. 

Maria et Francises Mercvrio et MinervaB 

Tutelares mei. Diis tvtelarib. 

Divo Evstorgio Dii qvi hvic templo 

Qvi hvic templo Praesident. 

Presidet. 

_ Nvmini ^ Nvmini 

Divi Georgi. Mercvrii sacr. 

Pollentis. Potentis Hercvli. Victori. 

Invicti. Pollenti. Potenti 

Invicto. 
Praestiti lovi. 

, Divis , S. 

Prestitibvs ivvantibus - Diis 

Georgio. Stephanoque Deabvs 

Cum deo opt. max. Q,ve. cum. 

love. 

Boldonii Epigraphica, p. 439. It. p. 348. It. p. 422. It. p. 649. 

Gruter. Corp. Inscript. p. 50. It. Cic. Or. pro Lege Man. 15. It. Grut. p. 
54. It p. 50. It. p. 22. It. ib. p. 2. 

Boldonius censures the author of the last inscription, for the absurdity of 
putting the saints before God hirnself; and imitating too closely the ancient 
mscription, which I have set against it, where the same impropriety is corn- 
mitted in regard to Jupiter. 

As to that celebrated act of Popish idolatrj^, the adoration of the Host ; I 
must confess, that I cannot find the least resemblance of it in any part of the 
Pagan worship : and as oft as I have been standing by at Mass, and seen the 
whole congregation prostrate on the ground, in the humblest posture of ador- 
mg, at the elevation of the consecrated piece of bread ; 1 could not help re- 
flecting on a passage of Tully, where speaking of the absurdity of the heathens 
in the choice of their gods, but was any man, says he, ever so mad, as to take 
that which he feeds upon for a God 7 Sed ecquem tarn amentem esse putas, 
qui illud, quo vescatur Deum credat esse 1 Cic. de Nat. Deor. 3. This was an 
extravagance reserved for Popery alone; and what an old Roman could not 
but think too gross, even for Egyptian idolatry to swallow, is now become the 
principal part of worship, and the distinguishing article of faith, in the creed 
of modern Rome. 

But their temples are not the only places where we see the proofs and overt 
acts of their superstition : the whole face of the country has the visible char- 
acters of Paganisni upon it ; and wherever we look about us, we cannot but 
find, as Paul did in Athens, Act. Apost. xvii. 17. clear evidence of its being 
possessed by a supersthious and idolatrous people. 

The old Romans, we know, had their gods, v^ho presided peculiarly over the 
roads, streets, and highways, called Viales, Semitales, Compitales : whose 
little temples or altars decked with flowers, or wh9se statues at least coarsely 
carved of wood or stone, were placed at convenient distances in the public 
ways, for the benefit of travellers, who used to step aside to pay their devo- 
tions to those rural shrines, and beg a prosperous journey and safety in their . 
travels. Ut rehgiosis viantium moris est, cum aliquis lucus, aut aliquis lucus 
sanctus in via oblatus est, votum postulare, domum apponere, pauhspere as- 
sidere. 

Neque justius religiosam moram viatori objecerit aut ara floribus redimita— 
aut truncus dolamine efligiatus, &c. — Apulei. Florid. 10 

Invoco vos, Lares viales, ut me bene juvetis. — Plaut. Merc. 5. 2. 

Now this custom prevails still so generally in all Popish coimtries, but 
especially in Italy, that one can see no other d.iflerence between the old and 



512 POPERY AND 

present superstition, than that of changing the name of the Deity, and chript- 
ening a^ it were the old Hecate in iriviis, by the new name of Maria in 
trivio ; by which title, I have observed one of their churches dedicated in this 
city : Rom. Mod. Gior. Rion. di Colonna. c. 11 ; and as the heathens used to 
paint over the ordinary statues of their gods, with red or some such gay color, 
Fictilem fuisse et ideo miniari solitum. Plin. Hist. N. 1. 35. 12. et a Censoribus 
Jovem miniandum locari. 1. 33. 7. It. Pausan. 2. 2 ; so I have oft observed the 
coarse images of those saints so daubed over with a gaudy red, as to resemble 
exactly the description of the God Pan in Yirgil. 

Sanguines ebuli baccis minioque rubentem. — Eel. 10. 

In passing along the road, it is common to see travellers on their knees be- 
fore these rustic altars ; which none ever presume to approach without some 
act of reverence ; and those who are most in haste, or at a distance, are sure 
to pull off their hats, at least, in token of respect : and I took notice that our 
postilions used to look back upon us, to see how we behaved on such occa- 
sions, and seemed surprised at our passing so negligently before places es- 
teemed so sacred. 

But besides these images and altars, there are frequently erected on the road 
huge wooden crosses; Sanctae Imagines et Cruces in viis publicis eriguntur, 
et nos propter Deum, et puram erga sanctos ejus fidem, sancta ejusmodi 
ubique erecta adoramuset salutamus. Durant. de Ritib. 1. 1. c. 6. dressed out 
with flowers, and hung round with the trifling offerings of the country people; 
which always puts me in mind of the superstitious veneration, which the 
heathens used to pay to some old trunks of trees or posts, set up in the high- 
ways, which they held sacred, 

Nam veneror, seu stipes habet desertus in agris 

Seu vetus in Trivio florida serta Lapis. Tibul. El. 1. 11. 

or oi that venerable oak in Ovid, Metamor. 8 ; covered with garlands and 
votive offerings. 

Stabatin his ingens annoso robore quercus ; 
Una nemus : Vittse mediam, memoresque tabellse 
Sertaque : cingebant, voti argumenta potentis. 

Reverend with age a stately oak there stood. 

Its branches widely stretch'd, itself a wood, * 

With ribbands, gai-lands, pictures cover' d o'er, 

The fruits of pious vows from rich and poor. 

This description of the Pagan oak puts me in mind of a story, that I have 
met with here, of a Popish oak very like it ; how a certain person devoted to 
the \yorship of the Virgin, hung up a picture of her in an oak, that he had in 
his vineyard, which grew so famous for its miracles, that the oak soon became 
covered with votive offerings, and rich presents from distant countries, so as 
to furnish a fund at last for the building of a ^reat church to the miraculous 
picture ; which now stands dedicated in this city, under the title of Mary of 
the Oak. Essendo egli divotissimo della Madqna, fece dipingere L'imagine di 
lei, e I'appese ad una Q,uercia — ^^dove commincio a manifest a rsi con moiti mi- 
racoli, intanto che sino dall' Africa, e da Constantinopoli I'erano mundati voti 
in tanta quantita, che vi si fece una gran Chiesa. — Rom. Modern. Gior. 3. c. 
30. Rion. della Reg. 

But what gave me still the greater notion of the superstition of these coun- 
tries, was to see those little oratories, or rural shrines, sometimes placed under 
the cover of a tree or grove ; agreeably to the descriptions of the old idolatry, 
in the sacred as well as profane writers ; Lucus and Ara Dianee. Horace ; 
or more generally raised on some eminence, or, in the phrase of scripture, on 
high places ; the constant scene of idolatrous worship in all ages : it being an 
universal opinion among the heathens, that the gods in a peculiar manner 
loved to reside on eminences or tops of mountains : Tuque ex tuo edito Monte 
Latiali, sancte Jupitei^Cic. pro IMill ; v/hich Pagan notion prevails still so 
generally with ths Papists, that there is hardly a rock or precipice, how 
dreadful or difficult soever of access, that has aot an oratory, or altar, or crw 
cifix at least, planted on the top of it. 



PAGANISM. * 518 

Among the rugged mountains of the Alps in Savoy, very near to a httle town 
called Modana, there stands on the top of a rock, a chapel, with a miraculous 
image of our Lady, which is visited with great devotion by the people, and 
sometimes, we were told, by the king himself; being famous, it seems, for a 
miracle of a singular kind ; the restoring of dead-born children to life ; but 
so far only, as to make them capable of baptism, after which they again ex- 
pire ; and our landlord assured me, that there was daily proof of the truth of 
this miracle, in children brought from all quarters to be presented before this 
shrine ; who never failed to show manifest tokens of life, by stretching out 
their arms, or opening their eyes, or even sometimes making water, whilst 
they were held by the priest in presence of the image. All which appeared so 
ridiculous to a French gentleman, who was with me at the place, but had not 
heard the story from our landlord, that he looked upon it as a banter or fiction 
of my own, till I brought him to my author, who with his wife' as well as our 
Voiturins, very seriously testified the truth of it ; and added farther, that when 
the French army passed that way in the last war, they were so impious, as to 
throw down this sacred image to the bottom of a vast precipice nard by it, 
which though of wood only, was found below entire and unhurt by the fall, 
and so replaced in its shrine, with greater honour than ever, by the attestation 
of this new miracle. 

On the top of Mount Senis, the highest mountain of the Alps, in the sarne 
passage of Savoy, covered with perpetual snow, they have another chapel, in 
which they perform divine service once a year, in the month of August ; and 
sometimes, as our guides informed us, to the destruction of the whole congre- 
gation, by the accident of a sudden tempest in a place so-elevated and ex- 
posed. And this surely comes up to the description of that worship, which 
the Jews were commanded to extirpate from the face of the earth : " Ye shall 
utterly destroy the places wherein the nations served their gods, upon the high. 
mountains and upon the hills, and under every green tree. And ye shall over- 
throw their altars, break their pillars, burn their groves, and hew down the 
graven images of their gods." Deuteron. xii. 2, 3. 

When we enter their tov/ns, the case is still the same, as it was in the 
country ; we find every where the same marks of idolatry, and the same 
reasons to make us fancy, that we are still treading Pagan ground ; whilst 
at every corner we see images and altars, with lamps or candles burning be- 
fore them; exactly answering to the descriptions of the ancient writers; 
Omnibus vicis Statuae, ad eas Thus, et Cerei. Cic. Off. 3. 26 ; and to what 
TertuUian reproaches the heathens with, that their streets, their markets, 
their baths, were not without an idol. De Spectac. c. 8. But above all, in the 
pomp and solemnity of their holy-days, and especially their religious proces- 
sions, we see the genuine remains of heathenism, and proof enough to con- 
vince us, that this is still the same Rome, which old Numa first tamed and 
civilized by the arts of religion : who as Plutarch says, in Numa, " by the in- 
stitution of supplications and processions to the gods, which inspire reverence, 
whilst they'gave pleasure to their spectators, and by pretended miracles, and 
divine apparitions, reduced the fierce spirits of his subjects under the power of 
superstition." 

The descriptions of the religious pomps and processions of the heathens 
come so near to what we see on every festival of the Virgin or other Romish 
Saint, that one can hardly help thinking those Popish ones to be still regulated 
by the old ceremonial of Pagan Rome. At these solemnities the chief magis- 
ti-ates used frecjuently to assist in robes of ceremony; attended by the Priests 
in surplices, with wax candles in their hands carrying upon a pageant or 
thensa thp images of their gods, dressed out in their best clothes. These 
were usually followed by the principal youth of the place, in white linen vest- 
ments or surf)lices, singmg hymns in honour of the god, whose festival they 
were celebrating ; accompanied by crowds of all sorts, that were initiated in 
the same religion, all with flambeaux or wax candles in their hands. This is 
the account which Apuleius, and other authors give us of a Pagan proces- 
sion ; and may 1 appeal to all, who have been abroad, whether it might not 
pass quite as well for the description of a Popish one. — Monsieur Tournefort, 
m his travels through Greece, reflects upon the Greek church, for having re- 
tained and taken into their present worship many of the old rites of heathen- 
ism, and particularly that of carrying and dancing about the images of the 



514 POPERY A^^D 

saints in their processions to singing and music. Lit. 3. 44. The reflection is 
full as applicable to his own, as it is to the Greek church, and the practice it- 
self, is so far from giving scandal in Italy, that the learned pubhsher of the 
Florentine Inscriptions takes occasion to show the conformity between them 
and the heathens, from this very instance of carrying about the pictures of 
their saints, as the Pagans did those of their gods, in their sacred processions. 
Cui non abludunt si sacra cum profanis conferre fas est pictae tabuiag Sancto- 
rum Imaginibus exornatee, quae, &c. Inscript. Antiq. Flor. p. 377. 

In one of those processions, made lately to St Peter's in the time of Lent, 
I saw that ridiculous penance of the flagellantes or self-whippers, who march 
with whips in their hands, and lash themselves as they go along, on the bare 
back, till it is all covered with blood ; in the same manner, as the fanatical 
Priests of Bellona or the Syrian Goddess, as well as the votaries of Isis, used 
to slash and cut themselves of old, in order to please the Goddess, by the 
sacrifice of their own blood ; which mad piece of discipline we find frequently 
mentioned, and as oft ridiculed by the ancient writers. 

But they have another exercise of the same kind, and in the same season 
of Lent, which, under the notion of penance, is still a more absurd mockery 
of all religion. When on a certain day, appointed annually for this disci- 
pline, men of all conditions assemble themselves towards the evening, in one 
of the churches of the city ; where whips or lashes made of cords are pro- 
vided, and distributed to every person present ; and after they are all served, 
and a short office of devotion performed, the candles being put out, upon the 
warning of a little bell, the whole company begin presently to strip, and try 
the force of these whips on their own backs, for the space of near an hour: 
during all which time, the church becomes, as it were, the proper image of 
hell : where nothing is heard but the noise of lashes and chains, mixed with 
the groans of those self-tormenters ; till satiated with their exercise, they are 
content to put on their clothes, and the candles being lighted again, upon the 
tinkhng of a second bell, they all appear in their proper dress. 

Seneca, alluding to the very same effects of fanaticism in Pagan Rome, 
says, " So great is the force of "it on disordered minds, that they try to appease 
the gods by such methods, as an enraged man would hardh' take to revenge 
himself. But, if there be any gods, who desire to be worshipped after this 
manner, they do not deserve to be worshipped at all : since the very worst of 
tyrants, though they have sometimes torn and tortured people's limbs, yet 
have never commanded men to torture themselves." Fragm. apud Lipsii 
Elect. 1. 2. 18, But there is no occasion to imagine, that all the blood, yvhich 
seems to flow on these occasions, really comes from the backs of these bigots : 
for it is probable that like their frantic predecessors, they may use some craft, 
as well as zeal, in this their fury; and I cannot but think, that there was a 
great deal of justice in that edict of their Emperor Commoaus, with regard to 
tnese Bellonarii, or whippers of antiquity, though it is usually imputed to his 
cruelty, when he commanded, that they should not be suffered to impose upon 
the spectators, but be obliged to cut and slash themselves in good earnest. 
Bellonse servientes vere exsecare brachium prsecepit, studio crudelitatis. 
Lamprid. in Commodo, 9. 

If I had leisure to examine the pretended miracles, and pious frauds of the 
Romish church, I should be able to trace them all from the same source of 
Paganism, and find, that the Priests of new Rome are not degenerated fr9m 
their predecessors, in the artof forging these holy impostures : which, as Livy 
observes of old Rome ; Quae quo magis credebant simpiices et religiosi homi- 
nes, eo plura nunciabantur, Liv. 1. 24. 10 ; were always multiplied in propor- 
tion to the credulity and disposition of the poor people to swallow them. 

In the early times of the republic, in the war ^vith the Latins, the gods 
Castor and Pollux are said to have appeared on white horses, in the Roman 
army, which by their assistance gained a complete victory. In memory of 
which, the general Posthumius vowed and built a temple publicly to those 
deities ; and for a proof of the fact, there was shown, we find in Cicero's 
time, the mark of the horses' hoofs on a rock at Regillum, where they first 
appeared. Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1. 3. 5. ib. 2. 2. de Div. 1. 34. 

Now this miracle, with many others, that I could mention of the same kind, 
Cic. Nat. D. 2. 2. Plutar. in vita P. JEm'il Val. Max. c. 8. 1. L. Flor. 1. 1.11. 
L 1. 12 ; has, I dare say, as authentic an attestation, as any which the Papists 



PAGANISM. 515 

can produce ; the decree of a senate to confirm it ; a temple erected in con- 
sequence of it ; visible marks of the fact on the spot where it was transacted ; 
and all this supported by the concurrent testimony of the best authors of an- 
tiquity ; amongst whom Dionysius of Halicarnassus says ; 1. 6. p. 337. that 
there were subsisting in his time at Rome many evident proofs of its reality, 
besides a yearly festival, with a solemn sacrifice and procession in memory of 
it : yet, for all this, these stories were but the jest of men of sense, even in the 
times of heathenism ; Aut si hoc fieri potuisse dicis, doceas oportet quomodo, 
nee fabellas aniles preferas. Cic. ibid. 3. 5. and seem so extravagant to us 
how there could ever be any so simple as to believe them. 

What better opinion then can we have, of all those of the same stamp in 
the Popish legends, which they have plainly built on this foundation, and 
copied from this very original'? Not content with barely copying, they seldom 
fail to improve the old story, with some additional forgery and invention of 
their own. — Thus, in the present case, instead of two persons on white horses, 
they take care to introduce three; and not only on v/hite horses, but at the 
head of white armies ; as in an old history of the holy wars, written by a pre- 
tended eyewitness, and published by Mabillon, it is solemnly affirmed of St. 
George, Demetrius, and Theodorus. Bell. Sac. Hist, in Mabill. Iter. Ital. T. 1. 
Par. 2. p. 148, 155. They show us too in several parts of Italy, the marks of 
hands and feet on rocks and stones, said to have been^effecte'i miraculously 
by the apparition of some saint or angel on the spot : just as the impression 
of Hercules' feet was shown of old on a stone in Scythia, Herodot. 1. 4. p. 
251. exactly res*- nbling the footsteps of a man. And they have also many 
churches and i ablic monuments erected, in testimony of such miracles ; 
Of saints and angels fighting visibly for them in their battles, which 
though always us ridiculous as that above-mentioned, are not yet supported 
by half so good evidence of their reahty. There is an altar of marble in St. 
Peter's, one of the greatest piecesof modern sculpture, representing in figures 
as large as the life, the story of Attila king of the Hunns, who in full march 
towards Rome with a victorious army, in order to pillage it, was frighted and 
driven back by the apparition of an angel, in time of Pope Leo I. 

The castle ano church of St. Angelo have their title from the apparition of 
an angel over th<= place, in the time of Gregory the Great. Moder. Giorn. 1. 
Boldonii Epigrapl'. 1. 2. p. 349. Rion. di Borgo 1. 

" The religion of Ceres of Enna was celebrated, as Cicero informs us, with 
a wonderful devotion, both in public and private through all Sicily; for her 
presence and divinity had been frequently manifested to them by numerous 
prodigies, and many people had received immediate help from her in their ut- 
rnost distress. Her image therefore in that temple was held in such venera- 
tion, that v/henever men beheld it, they fancied themselves beholding either 
Ceres herself, or the figure of her at least not made by human hands, but 
dropt down to them from heaven." Now, if in the place of Ceres of Enna, 
we should insert into this relation, our Lady of Loretto, or of Impruneta, or 
any other miraculous image in Italy; ihe very same account would suit as 
exactly with the history of the modern saint, as it is told by the present Ro- 
mans, as it formerly did with that of Ceres, as it is transmitted to us by the 
ancients. And what else indeed are all their miraculous images, which we 
see in every great town, said to be made by angels, and sent to them from 
heaven, Aring. Rom. Subter. I. 5. c. 5. Mounlfauc. Diar. ibid. 137. but mere 
copies of the ancient fables of the Diopetes A^alina, or image of Diana, dropt 
from the clouds; Act. Apost, c. xix. 35. or the Palladium of Troy, which, 
according to old authors, Pitisci Lexic. Antiquitant. was a wooden statue 
three cubits long, which fell from heaven. 

In one of their churches here, they show a picture of the Virgin .which, as 
their writers affirm, Rom. Modern. Giorn. 2 Rion. di Ripa. c. 43. was brought 
down from heaven with great pomp, and after having hung a while with 
surprising lustre in the air, in the sight of all the clergy and people of Rome, 
was dehvered by angels into the hands of Pope John I., who marched out 
m solemn procession, in order to receive that celestial present. And is not 
this exactly of a piece with the old Pagan story of King Nunia, when in this 
same city he issued from his palace, with priests and people after him, and 
with public prayer and solemn devotion received the ancile, or heavenly shield, 
which in the presence of all the people of Rome, was sent down to him with 



516 POPERY AND 

much the same formality from the clouds'? Ov. Fast. 1. 3. And as that wise 
prince, for the security of his heavenly present, ordered several others to be 
made so exactly like it, that the original could not be distinguished ; so the 
Romish Priests have thence taken the hint, to form after each celestial pattern, 
a number of copies, so perfectly resembling each other, as to occasion end- 
less squabbles among themselves about their several pretensions to the divine 
original. 

The rod of Moses, with which he performed his miracles, is still preserved, 
as they pretend, and shown here with great devotion, in one of the principal 
churches ; and just so the rod of Romulus, with which he performed his au- 
guries, was preserved by the Priests as a sacred relique in old Rome, and kept 
with great reverence from being touched or handled by the people : Plutar. m 
Camil. 145. D. which rod too, like most of the Popish relics, had the testi- 
mony of a miracle in proof of its sanctity ; for when the temple, where it was 
kept, was burnt to the ground, it was found entire under the ashes, and un- 
touched by the flames, Valer. Max. c. 8. 10. It. Cic. de Divin. 1. 17. Plutar. 
in Rom. which same miracle has been borrowed and exactly copied by the 
present Romans, in many instances; particularly, in a miraculous image of 
our Saviour in John Later an ; over which the flames, it seems, had no power, 
though the church itself has been twice destroyed by fire. 

Nothing is more common among the miracles of Popery, than to hear of 
images, that on certain occasions had spoken ; or shed tears ; or sweat ; or 
bled. And do not we find the very same stories in all the heathen writers ?- 
Of which I could bring numberless examples from old as well as new Rome, 
from Pagan as well as Popish legends. Rome, as the describer of it says, 
abounds with these treasures, or speaking images. But he laments the negli- 
gence of their ancestors, in not recording, so particularly as they ought, the 
very w^ords and other circumstances of such conversations. They show us 
here an image of the Virgin, which reprimanded Gregory the Great, for pass- 
ing by her too carelessly. And, in St. PauFs church, a crucifix, which spoke 
to St. Bridgid. Ad sanctum Paulum, ubi vidimus ligneum Crucifixi Imaginem, 
quem sancta Brigida sibi loquentem audiisse perhibetur. Mabill. D. Itahc. p. 
133. Durantus mentions another Madonna, which spoke to the sexton, in 
commendation of the piety of one of her votaries. Imaginem Sanctae Marise 
Custodem Ecclesiae allocutam et Alexii singularem pietatem commendasse. 
Rurant. de Rit. 1. 1. c. p. 5. ^ And did not the image of Fortune do the same, 
or more in old Rome 7 Which, as authors say, spoke tvyice in praise of those 
matrons, who had dedicated a temple to her. Fortunes item muliebris simula- 
crum, quod est in via Latina, rion semel, sed bis locutum constitit, his paene 
verbis, bene me matronse vidistis, riteque dedicastis. Valer. 3Iax. I. 8. 

They have a church here dedicated to St. Mary the Weeper, or to a Madonna 
famous for shedding tears. St. Maria del Pianto. Rom. Mod. Gior. 3 Rion. 
della Regosa 5. They show an image too of our Saviour, which for some 
time before the sacking of Rome wept so heartil>^ that the good fathers of 
the monastery were employed in wiping its lace with cotton. And was not 
the case just the same among their ancestors, when on the approach of some 
public calamity, the statue of Apollo, as Livy tells us, wept for three days 
and nights successively 7 Apollo triduumet tres noctes lacrymavit. Liv. '1. 
43. 13. They have another church built in honor of an image, which bled 
very plentifully, from a blow given to it by a blasphemer. ^ And were not the 
old idols too as full of blood, when as Livy relates, all the images iii the tem- 
ple of Juno were seen to sweat with drops of it 7 Signa ad Junonis sospitae 
sudore manavere. Liv. 23. 31. AdLucum Feronise sanguine sudarunt. lb. 27. 4. 

All which prodieies, as well modern as ancient, are derived from the same 
source; the contrivance of priests or governors, in order to draw gain or 
advantage out of the poor people, upon whom they thus impose. 

Xenophon, though himself much addicted to superstition, speaking of the 
prodigies, which preceded the battle of Leuctra, and portended victory to the 
Thebans, tells us, that some people looked upon them as all forged and con- 
trived by the magistrates, the better to animate and encourage the multitude ; 
and as the originals themselves were but impostures, it is no wonder, that 
the copies of them appear such gross and bungling forgeries. Xenophon, 
Ellen. 1. 6. 

I have observed a stosy in Herodotus, 1. i, p. 235. not unlike the account, 

\ 



PAGANISM. 517 

which is given of the famed travels of the house of Loretto ; of certain sacred 
mystical things, that travelled about from country to country, and after many 
removals and journeys, settled at last, for good and all, in Delos. But this 
hnposture of the holy house might be suggested rather^ as Addison has ob- 
served, (Travels from Pesaro to Rome,) by the extraordinary veneration paid 
in old Rome to the cottage of its founder Romulus : which was held sacred 
by the people, and repaired with great care from time to time, with the same 
kind of rnaterials, so as to be kept up in the same form, in which it was originally 
built. Dion. Halicar, 1. 1. It was turned also hke this other cottage of our 
Lady, into a temple, and had divine service performed in it, till it happened to 
be burnt down by the fire of a sacrifice in the time of Augustus : Dio. 1. 48. 
p. 437. But what makes the similitude still more remarkable is, that this 
pretended cottage of Romulus was shown on the Capitoline Hill : Per Romuli 
casam, perque veteris Capitolii humilia tecta jaro ; (Val. Max. 1. 4. c. li :) 
whereas it is certain, that Romulus himself lived on Mount Palatin : Plutarch. 
in Rom. p. 30. Dion. Hal. 1. 2. p. 110. Ed. Huds. So that if it had been the 
house pf Romulus, it must needs, like the holy house of Loretto, have taken 
a leap in the aii*, and suffered a miraculous translation, though not from so 
great a distance, yet from one hill at least to the other. 

But if we follow their own writers, it is not the holy house of Loretto, but 
the homely cradle of our Sayiour, that we should compare rather v/ith the 
little house of Romulus : which cradle is now shown in Mary the Great, and 
on Christmas-day exposed on the high altar to the adoration of the people ; 
being held in the same veneration by present Rome, as the humble cottage 
of its founder had been by its old inhabitants. "Rome," says Baronius, 
(Annal. 1. Christi. 5. It. Arin^. Rom. Subt. 1. 6. 1.) "is now in possession of^ 
that noble monument of Christ's nativity, made only of wood, without any 
ornament of silver or gold, and is made more happily illustrious by it, than it 
was of old by the cottage of Romulus ; which, though built only with mud 
and straw, our ancestors preserved with great care for many ages." 

The melting of St.Januarius's blood at_ Naples, v^^henever it is brought to 
his head, which is done with great solemnity on the day of his festival, (Aring. 
Rom. Snbt. 1. 1. 16.) whilst at all other times it continues dry and congealed 
in a glass phial, is one of the standing and most authentic miracles of Italy. 
Yet Addison, who twice saw it performed, assures us, that instead of ap- 
pearing to be a real miracle, he thought it one of the most bunghng tricks 
that he had ever seen. Trav. at Naples. 

Mabillon's account of the fact seems to solve it very naturally, without the 
help of a miracle : (Iter. Ital. p. 106 :) for during the time that a Mass or two 
are celebrated in the church, the other Priests are tampering with this phial 
of blood, which is suspended all the while in such a situation, that as soon as 
any part of it begins to melt by the heat of their hands, or other management, 
it drops of course into the lower side of the glass which is empty; upon the 
first discovery of which, the miracle is proclaimed aloud, to the great joy and 
edification of the people. 

But by what way soever it be effected, it is plainly nothing else, but the copy 
of an old cheat of the same kind, transacted near the same place, which 
Horace makes himself merry with on his journey to Brundusium ; telling us, 
how the Priests would have imposed upon him and his friends, at a town 
called Gnatia ; by persuading them, that the frankincense in the temple 
used to dissolve and melt miraculously of itself, without the help of fire. 
Sat. 1. 5. V. 98. 

In the Cathedral church of Ravenna, I saw in Mosaic work the pictures of 
those Archbishops of the place, who, as all their historians affirm, (Hist. 
Raven. &c. Aring. Rom. Subt. 1. 6. c. 48.) were chosen for several ages suc- 
cessively by the special designation of the Holy Ghost, who, in a full assembly 
of the clergy and people, used to descend visibly on the person elect, in the 
shape of a dove. If the fact of such a descent be true, it will easily be ac- 
counted for by a passage in Aulus Gellius, whence the hint was probably 
taken; who tells us of Archytas tlie philosopher ind mathematician, that he 
foi-med a pigeon of wood so artificially, as to make it fly by the power of 
mechanism, just as he directed it. A. Gell. Noct. Alt. 1. 10. 12. And we find 
from Strada, that many tricks of this kind were actually contrived for the 
<^versioa of Charles the Fifth in his monastery, by one Turrianus, who made 
44 



518 POPERY AND 

little birds fly out of the room, and back again, by hisf great skill in machinery. 
Gronovii. Not. in Gell. Ibid. 

It would be endless to run through all the Popish miracles which are evi- 
dently forged, or copied from the originals of Paganism ; since there is scarcely 
a prodi^'' in the old historians, or a fable in the old poets, but what is trans- 
cribed mto their legends, and swallowed by their silly bigots, as certain and 
undoubted facts. 

The story of Arion the musician, riding triumphant with his harp on the 
back of a dolphin, that took him up when thrown overboard at sea, one would 
think, is too grossly fabulous, to be applied to any purpose of christian super- 
stition. Yet our present Romans so far surpass the old in fable and impos- 
ture, that out of this single storv they have coined many of the same stamp, 
of dolphins taking up and bringing ashore with great pomp several of their 
saints, both dead and alive, who had been thrown into the sea by mfidels, 
either to drown, or to deprive them of burial. Quos Judex submersos in mare 
necavit ; sed Delphinorum obsequio Corpora eorum ad littus delata sunt. Sed 
de Obsequio Delphinorum martyribus impenso plura infra suo loco. Aring. 
Rom. Subterr. 1. 1. c. 9, 10. ' 

The fable of the harpies, those furies or winged monsters, who were so 
troublesome to uEneas and his companions, (Virg. JEn. 3. 211.) seems to be 
copied in the verv first church within the walls of Rome, close to the gate of 
the people, as it is called, by which we enter it from the north : where there 
is an altar with a public inscription, signif\dng, that it was built by Pope 
Paschal by divine inspiration, in order to drive away a nest of huge daemons 
or monsters, who used to perch upon a tree in that very place, and terribly in- 
sult all who entered the city. 

The popish writers themselves are forced to allow, that many both of their 
reliques and their miracles have been forged by the craft of Priests, for the 
sake of money and lucre. Durantus, a zealous defender of all their ceremo- 
nies, gives several instances of the former ; particularly of the bones of a 
common thief, which had for some time been honored with an altar, and 
worshipped under the title of a saint. S. Martinus Altare, quod in honorem 
Martyrio exstructum fuerat cum ossa et reliquias cujusdam latronis esse de- 
prehendisset, submoveri jiissit. Durant de Ritib. 1. 1. c. 25. And for the lat- 
ter ; Lyra, in his comment on Eel and the Dragon, observes, that sometimes 
also in the church, very great cheats are put upon the people, by false mira- 
cles, contrived, or countenanced at least, by their Priests for some gain and 
temporal advantage. Aliquando fit in Eccle'sia maxima deceptio populi in rni- 
racuhs fictis a sacerdotibus, vel eis adhae reatibus propter lucrum temporale, 
&c. Nic. Lyr. in Dan. c. 14. And what their own authors confess of 
some of their miracles, we may venture, without any breach of charitv, to 
believe of them all; nay, v%-e cannot indeed believe any thing else witnoui 
impiety ; and without supposing God to concur in an extraordinary manner, 
to the estabhshment of fraud, error, and superstition in the world. 

The refuge or protection given to all who fly to the church for shelter, is a 
privilege directly transferred from the heathen temples to the Popish churches 5 
and has been practised in Rome, from the time of its founder Romulus ; who 
in imitatipn of the cities of Greece, opened an asylum or sanctuary to fugitives 
of all nations. Romulus, ut saxo lucum circumdedit alto ; Quilibet hue," inquit, 
confuge, tutus eris. Ov. Fast. 3. 

But we may observe the great moderation of Pagan, above that of Popish 
Rome, in regard to this custom ; for I do not remember that there was ever 
more than one asylum in the times of the republic ; whereas there are now 
some hundreds in the same city ; and when that single one which was opened 
rather for the increase of its inhabitants, than the protection .of criminals, was 
found in the end. to give too great encouragement to mischief and hcentiousne^; ; 
they enclosed it round in such a manner, as to hinder all access to it. Dio. 1. 
47. p. 335. ^ Whereas the present Popish sanctuaries stand perpetually open, 
not to receive strangers, but to shelter villains; so that it may hterally be 
said of these, what our Saviour said of the Jewish temple, that they have turned 
ihe house of prayer into a den of thieves. Matt. xxi. 13. 

In the early ages of Christianity there were many limitations put upon the 
use of this privilege by emperors and councils ; and the greater crimes of 
murder, adultery, theft, &c. were especially excepted from the benefit of i3t. 



PAGANISM. 519 

Neque Homicidis, neque Adulteris, neque virginum raptoribus, &c. termmorum 

custodies; cautelam sed etiam inde extrahes, et supplicium eis inferes. Justin. 
Novel. 17. c. 7. But ROW they scruple not to receive to sanctuary, even the 
most detestable crimes ; and it is owing without doubt to this policy of holy 
church, that murders are so common with them in Italy on slight provoca- 
tions ; whilst there is a church always at hand and always open, to secure of- 
fenders from legal punishment ; several of whom have been shown to me in 
different places, walking about at their ease and in full security, within the 
bounds of their sanctuary. 

In their very priesthood, they have contrived to keep up as near a resem- 
blance, as they could, to that of Pagan Rome : and the sovereign Pontiff*, 
instead of deriving his succession from Peter, who, if ever he was at Rome, 
did not reside there at least in any worldly pomp «r splendor, may with more 
reason, and a much better plea, style himself the successor of tlie Pontifex 
Maximus, or chief priest of old Rome ; whose authority and dignity was the 
greatest in the republic ; and who was looked upon as the arbiter or judge of 
all things, civil as well as sacred, human as well as divine : whose power, 
established almost with the foundation of the city, "was an omen," says Poly- 
dore Virgil, " and sure presage of that priestly majesty, by which Rome was 
once agam to reign as universally, as it had done before by the force of its 
arms." Pol. Vir. In. rer. 1. 4. 14. 

But of all the sovereign pontiffs of Pagan Rome, it is very remarkable that 
Caligula was the first who ever offered his foot to be kissed by any who ap- 
proached him : which raised a general indignation through the city, to see 
themselves reduced to suffer so great an indignity. Those who endeavored 
to excuse it, said, that it was not done out of insolence, but vanity; and for 
the sake of showing his golden shpper, set with jewels. Seneca declaims 
upon it in his usual manner, as the last affront to liberty; and the introduc- 
tion of a Persian slavery in?b the manners of Rome. Absoluto et gratias 
agenti porrexit osculandum sinistrum pedem — qui excusant, negant id inso- 
lentiae causa factum; aiunt Socculum auratum, imo aureum, margaritis dis- 
tinctum ostendere eum voluisse — natus in hoc, ut mores civitatis Persica ser- 
vitute mutaret, &c. Senec. de benef 1. 2. 12. Yet, this servile act, unworthy 
either to be imposed or complied with by man, is now the standing ceremonial 
of Christian Rome, and a necessary condition of access to the reigning Popes ; 
though derived from no better origin, than the frantic pride of a brutal Pagan 
tyrant. 

The great variety of their religious orders and societies of priests seems to 
have been formed upon the plan of the old colleges or fraternities of the Au- 
gurs. Pontifices, Selli, Fratres Arvales, &-c. The vestal Virgins might furnish 
the hint for the foundation of nunneries : and I have observed something very 
like to the rules and austerities of the monastic life, in the character and 
manner of several priests of the heathens, who used to live by themselves, 
retired from the world, near to the temple or oracle of the deity, to whose 
particular service they were devoted: as the Selli, the Priests of Dodonsean 
Jove, a self-mortifying race. From the character of those Selli, or as others 
call them EUi, the Monks of the Pagan world ; seated in the fruitful soil of 
Dodona; abounding, as Hesiod describes it, with every thing that could make 
life easy and happy ; and whither no man ever approached them without an 
offering in his hands, we may learn, whence their successors of modern times 
have derived that pecuUar skill or prescriptive right, of choosing the richest 
part of every country for the place of their settlement. Sophoc. Trachin. p. 
340. V. 1175. Schol. Triclin. 

Whose groves the Selli, race austere, surround ; 

Their feet unwash'd, their slumbers on the ground. Pope. II. 17. 234. 

But above all, in the old descriptions of the lazy mendicant Priests among 
the heathens, who used to travel from house to house, with sacks on their 
backs; and, from an^opinion of their sanctity, raise large contributions of 
nioney, bread, wine, and all kinds of victuals, for the support of their frater- 
nity, we see the very picture of the begging friars ; who are always about the 
streets in the same habit, and on the same errand, and never fail to carry home 
with them a good sack full of provisions for the use of their convent. Stipes 
aereas immo vero et argenteas multis certatim offerentibus sinu reciperepatulo ; 



520 POPERY AND PAGANISM. 

.nee non et vini cadum et lactis et caseos avidis animis corradentis et in Siao 
eulos huic qusestui de industria prseparatos farcientes, &c. Apuleius Metam. 
1. 8. p. 262. 

Cicero, in his book of laws, restrains ihis practice of begging, or gathering 
alms, to one particular order of Priests, and that only on certain days ; be- 
cause, as he says, it propagates superstition, and impoverishes families. 
Which may let us see the policy of the church of Rome, m the great care 
that they have taken to multiply their begging orders. Stipem sustuhmus, 
usi earn quam ad paucos dies propriam Ideeae matris excepimus. Implet enim 
superstitione animos, exhaurit domos. Cic. de Legib. 1. 2. 9, 16. 

I could easily carry on this parallel, through many more instances of the 
Pagan and Popish ceremonies, to show from what spring all that superstition 
flows, which we so justly charge them with, and how vain an attempt it 
must be, to justify by the principles of Christianity, a worship formed upon 
the plan, and after the very pattern of pure heathenism. I shall not trouble 
myself with inquiring at what time, and in what manner, those several cor" 
ruptions were introduced into the church: whether they were contrived by 
the intrigues and avarice of Priests, who found their advantage in reviving 
and propagating impostures, which had beeji of old so profitable to their pre- 
decessors ; or whether the genius of Rome >>'as so stronglv turned to fanati- 
cism and superstition, that they were forced, in condescension to the humor 
of the people, to dress up their new religion to the modes and fopperies of the 
old. This, I knovv, is the principle, by which their own writers defend them- 
selves, as oft as they are attacked on this head. 

Aringhus, in his account of subterraneous Rome, acknowledges this con- 
formity between the Pagan and Popish rites, and defends the admission of 
the ceremonies of heathenism into the service of the church, by the authority 
of their wisest Popes and Governors: "who found it necessary," he says, "in 
the conversion of the Gentiles, to dissemble anTl wink at manv things, and 
vield to the times ; and not to use force against customs, which the people are 
so obstinately fond of; nor to think of extirpating at once every thing, that 
had the appearance of profane ; but to supersede in some measure the obliga- 
tion of the sacred laws ; till those converts convinced themselves by degrees, 
and informed of the whole truth, by the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, 
should be content to submit in earnest to the yoke of Christ." Aring. Rom. 
Subter. Tom. 1. Lib. 1. Cap. 21. ^ 

It is by the same principles, that the Jesuits defend the concessions, which 
they make at this day to their proselytes in China ; who, where pure Christi- 
anity will not go down, never scruple to compound the matter between Jesus 
and Confucius ; and prudently allow, what the stiff old prophets so impoliticly 
condemned, a partnership between God and Baal : of which though they have 
often been accused at the court of Rome, yet I have never heard, that their 
conduct has been censured. But this kind of reasoning, how plausible soever 
it may be, with regard to the first ages of Christianity, or to nations just con- 
verted from Paganism, is so far from excusing the present Gentihsm of the 
church of Rome, that it is a direct condemnation of it ; since the necessity 
alleged for the practice, if ever it had any real force, has not, at least for many 
ages past, at all subsisted : and their toleration of such practices, however 
useful at first for reconciling heathens to Christianity, seems now to be the 
readiest way to drive Christians back again to heathenism. 

I have sufficiently made good what 1 first undertook to prove: an exact 
conformity, or rather uniformity of worship, between Popery and Paganism. 
For since, we see the present people of Rome worshipping m the same tem- 
ples ; at the same altars; sometimes the same images ; and always with the 
same ceremonies, as the old Romans ; who can absolve them from the same 
superstition and idolatry of which we condemn their Pagan ancestors 7 



ROMISH CEREMONIES. 



Sacraments. — Baptism. — Conjlrmation. — The Eucharist. — Ceremonies of 
the Mass. — Blessed Bread. — Viaticum. — Penance. — Auricular Confession. 
— Excommunication. — Bull " In Ccsna Domini.^' — Extreme Unction. — 
Benediction of Grave- Yards. — Eunerals. — Burial, — Marriage. — Festi- 
vals. — Calendar. — January. — February. — March. — Lent. — Carnavals. — • 
Easter. — April. — May. — Whitsuntide. — Procession of Corpus Christi. — ■ 
June. — July. — August.— September. — October. — November. — December. — 
Processions. — Relics. — Adoration of the Pope. — Coronation of the Pope. — 
Benediction of Bells. — Reception of Nuns. 

From the multifarious ceremonies which the Roman Hierarchy have enacted, 
it was deemed requisite to select a few specimens, correctly to illustrate the 
nature of that antichristian system as embodied in its impious and soul-de- 
stroying ritual. The different sections which follow have been compiled chieiay 
from that standard and authentic work, published in France, about one hun- 
dred years since, entitled, Picart's " Ceremonies and Religious Customs." 

The ensuing concise delineations of the practical blasphemy and idolatry 
which are enjoined by the Papal Hierarchy, and universally enacted wherever 
the supremacy of the Court of Rome is acknowledged, form a suitable appen- 
dix to the fourth chapter of these "Illustrations of Popery." Only the most 
prominent of all the superstitious observances which are appointed by the Ro- 
man Pontiffs are noticed. They maybe subdivided into two general classes — 
The Sacraments ; and the Festivals. 

I. Sacraments. — According to the Roman Confession of Faith, as enacted 
by Pope Pius V., and as admitted by all living Papists ; there are seven Sa- 
craments ; which are thus characterized. " By Baptism we are born in Christ. 
By Confirmation we increase in grace. By the Eucharist our souls are sus- 
tained. By Penance we recover the health of the soul. Extreme Unction 
washes away Impurity of Sin. By Holy Orders, Priests receive power to ex- 
ercise all the functions of the Ministry. Every one knows the end of Mar- 
riage." 

Of those Sacraments, they say, "Baptism, Penance, and the Eucharist are 
absolutely necessary." 

1. Baptism.— The first of the Romish Superstitions in reference to their per- 
version of the Redeemer's institution, is this ; that " the Water which is used 
for christening, must be blessed on the eve of Easter or Whitsunday; and be 
carefully kept in a vessel for that purpose." 

The ensuing narrative combines the -succession of mummery which has 
been added to the Redeemer's ordinance. The Priest begins with an inquiry 
to the Sponsors respecting the child, and its name; with their determination 
that the child shall- live and die a Papist. Then follows an exhortation; to 
which succeed a few questions concerning the requirement of the Sponsors. 
The Priest next breathes thrice upon the child, saying — " Come out of this child, 
thou evil spirit, and make room for the Holy Ghost." After which, he makes 
a cross on the"child's forehead with the thumb of his right hand, and another on 
its breast, pronouncing — " Receive the sign of the cross in thy forehead and in 
thy breast !" Having blessed the salt, he puts some of it in the child's mouth, 
saying, "Receive the salt of Wisdom." A third prayer is repeated; after 
which he puts on his cap, exorcises the Devil, and commands the evil Spirit to 
come out of him ; and again makes the sign of the Cross on the child's fore- 
head, lays his hand on his head, and recites another prayer. He then takes 
hotld of th? child's clothes, having laid the stole upon it ; and then the Spon- 
sors Gnter with the Child> repeating after the Priest the Apostles' Creed, and 
44* 



522 ROMISH CEREMONIES. ' 

the Lord's Praj^er. At the Font of '' holy water," the Priest exorcises Sa- 
tan once more J and then taking some spittle on his thumb, he rubs the child's 
ear and nostrils, repeating the same word, " Ephphatha," which our Lord 
said to the man who was deaf and dumb ; doubtless intending to coerce the 
silly people to believe that the child is deaf and dumb; and that the Priest can 
make it hear and speak. Then while the Priest prepares the oil, the child is 
stripped to below the shoulders. 

The male Sponsor holds the child over the font; and the female Sponsor 
takes it by the feet, turning it towards the East. Then the questions of renun- 
ciation of the Devil, &c., are proposed. After which, the Priest anoints the 
child between his shoulders with a Cross, and puts off the purple stole, for a 
white one; when other questions are proposed to the Sponsors. When they 
have repUed, the Priest takes some of the " blessed water," and pours it 
thrice on the child's head in the form of a Cross. Next he anoints the child's 
head with the chrism in the form of a cross, lays a piece of white linen on its 
head, and puts a lighted taper into the Sponsor's hand. The whole ceremony 
is closed with a short unintelligible exhortation. 

2. Confirmation. — Candidates are confirmed ordinarily at seven years of 
age; in the morning, and fasting. Before the Prelate begins that ceremony, 
he washes his hands, and puts on his white ornaments. He then turns to the 
candidates, who stand near him, the Boys on the right and the Girls on the 
left. After a prayer he sits down, and the candidates kneel. Having directed 
the name of each candidate to be registered, he dips the thumb of his right 
hand in the chrism, and with it signs a cross uyon their foreheads, giving to 
each of them a pat on the cheek, saying, "Peace be to you." Immediately 
after, the forehead of the youth is bound with a slip of linen about two fingers' 
broad. Then the Prelate says, " I confirm y^n by this chrism of salvation." 
The ceremony is ended bv the Prelate's blessing, and the sign of the cross oyer 
them. The only thing which is remarkable is the blow upon the cheek, which 
is intended as a mark of spiritual liberation. It was borrowed from the Pa- 
gans, who used to enfranchise their slaves, by giving them a blow upon the 
side of the head, to denote that they would no more be abused as slaves. 

3. The Eucharist. — By the Papal Rubric, it is enjoined upon all persons that 
they shall receive the Eucharist at Mass, at least every Christmas, Easter, 
Whitsunday, Twelfth tide, Corpus Christi day. All Saints, Assumption of the 
Virgin Mary, Festival of the Patron, and the Anniversary of Baptism. The 
Wafer must be taken fasting. 

Ceremonies of the Mass. — On Sunday, before high mass, the holy water is 
made. A Procession of the Priest, &c., with the cross carried at the head of 
it, follows. There are thirty-five actions of the Priest at Mass, all of which it 
is pretended are allegorical. 

1. The Priest goes to the Altar — which, the Papists say, is an allusion to 
Christ's retreat with his Apostles to the Garden of Olives. 

2. The Priest utters a preparatory prayer— to signify Christ's prayer in the 
garden of Gethsemane. 

3. The Priest Confesses at the Altar — to record the prostration of Christ, 
and his sweating of blood in the garden. 

4. The Priest goes up and kisses the Altar — to denote his reconciliation with 
God, and that of the people through him— and also to show the kiss of Judas. 

5. The Introit is then sung, during which the Priest "thurifies" the Altar ; 
which perfume represents the prayers of Believers. 

6. The "Introit" is called the beginning of the Mass— to bespeak Christ's 
entrance into the house of Annas. 

7. The " Kyrie Eleison" immediately follows the Introit; and that praj^er, it 
is said, presents the idea of Peter's tears. 

8. The Priest then reches, and the choir sing the "Gloria in Excelsis ;" 
which, the Papists aver, means our Lord showing himself to the Faithful. 
Then the Priest makes several turns to the people, and kisses the Altar at each 
turn, adding, " Dominus vobiscum, the Lord be with you." To which the 
people reply — " Et cum spiritu tuo, and with thy spirit." All which frequent 
alternate salutations, we are gravely told, display the Lord's looking upon 
Peter with pity and compassion, so that Peter was sensible the Lord was ^vilh 
him ; and to exemphfy the harmony which should exist between the Priest 
and people at the celebration of the Mass. 



ROMISH CEREMONIES. SS3 

9. The Priest next reads the Epistle, which symboHzes the accusation brought 
ngainst Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate. 

10. After the Epistle the Gradual \s sung; during which the Deacon pre- 
sents the Incense to the priest ; who then kneels and bows before the Altar, re- 
peating a short prayer. That ceremony being an indication of the Priest and 
People going to answer before the Tribunal of Jehovah. 

11. The Priest next reads the Gospel ; which unfolds Herod's sending of 
Christ to Pontius Pilate. The Gospel is also carried from the right side of the 
Altar to the left ; which is an emblem of the preaching of it to the Gentiles, 
after the refusal of the Jews. It also declares, that Jesus Christ, after having 
been insulted and despised by Herod, who typifies the Jews, was carried be- 
fore Pilate, the representative of the Gentiles. 

12. The uncovering of the chalice follows, which represents the manner in 
which the Lord was stripped for the scourging. 

13. The Gospel is then perfumed, and the Priest kisses it. The creed is next 
sung; and at the end of it, the Priest having kissed the Altar, turns to the 
people, and kisses the Gospel and the Altar, as before. Then succeeds the 
offertory or presentation of the Host, which shows the Redeemer's scourging. 

14. The Priest elevates the chalice, to show that Jesus was about to be ele- 
vated as a victim ; and then covers it, to exemplify that the Sacrifices of the 
Pagans were crowned, before they were immolated to their idols. 

15. The Priest blesses the Bread, and Wine, and the Frankincense, and then 
perfumes the Bread, and Wine, and the Altar — to show the sweet smelling 
savour of the sacrifice, which the Priest prays may be acceptable tp Goa. 
Afterwards, the Priest washes his fingers in imitation of Christ's washing the 
feet of the Apostles — and also to exhibit Pilate's washing of his hands to de- 
clare the Lord's innocence. 

16. Having washed his fingers, the Priest bows profoundly to the middle of 
the altar ; makes a second oblation of the Bread and Wine • and then mutters 
an inaudible prayer, called one of the Secretums of the Mass. 

17. At the end of that Secretum, which it is said is the Treasury in which 
the Priest shuts up the prayers of the people, he exhorts the people to lift up 
their hearts ; for the Priest is about to bring down the Lord of Heaven and 
earth upon the Altar. — That part of the ceremonial is denominated the Pre- 
face ; all which, it is aflfirmed, symbolizes Christ's condemnation. 

18. The Canon immediately follows the preface— which is applied to Christ's 
bearing the cross and going to die for us. 

19. Then the Priest covers the Host and Chalice with his hands — which is 
adopting the customs of the Jewish and Gentile Priests, who laid their hands 
upon the Beasts that they intended to sacrifice— and it also preserves in re- 
membrance the action of Saint Veronica, who, it is fabled, lent her handkerchief 
to the Lord, when he was carrying: his cross, and he left the similitude of his 
face upon that handkerchief, of which they contend, that the original has miTa- 
culously multiplied equally wonder-working copies. 

20. The Priest makes the sign of the cross over the host and chalice — which 
represents the sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross. 

21. The adoration of the wafer by the Priest, next succeeds ; with his eleva- 
tion of it to be worshipped by the people, which points out the Saviour lifted 
up on the cross. 

22. After the Priest has consecrated the chahce, he elevates it to be adored. 

23. The Priest then prays for ail the souls in Purgatory— which holds forth 
the Lord's prayer on the cross for his enemies. 

24. The Priest then smites his breast, and implores the Mediation of the 
Saints whom he names — that represents the prayer of the dying penitent thief 
on the cross. 

25. The Wafer and Cup are next exalted, and afterward the Priest recites 
the Lord's prayer. When he comes to the petition, "Give us this day our 
daily bread !"— the Deacon takes the Paten, lifts it up, and then returns it te 
the Priest— that is said to express the relation of the Believer to Christ. 

26. The Priest then mutters an unheard prayer for the Mediation of the Vir- 
gin Mary and the Saints. He then puts the Wafer upon the Paten and breaks 
it— which, we are told, represents the agony of Christ. 

27. The Priest puts a part of the Wafer into the chalice, which discloses the 
descent of Christ into Limbo. 



524 ROMISH CEREMONIES. 

28. Then the Priest thrice says, and the choir sing the Agnus Dei, while the 
Priest thrice smites his breast — which records the sorrow of the Disciples who 
returned from the cross beating their breasts. 

29. After a private prayer, the Priest kisses the Altar, and the instrument of 
peace which he receives from the Deacon ; and then it is returned to the Dea- 
con, and sent about the congregation, that each person may kiss the Pax ; 
during which interval, the Priest recites two inaudible prayers. Then having 
eaten the Wafer, he distributes other wafers to the people. The Priest's swal- 
lowing the Wafer is said to disclose the burial of our Lord's body ; and his de- 
scent to Hell. Then follows the anthem, named "The Communion." 

30. The Priest then puts wine into the chalice with a short prayer— then 
Vv'ine and water are poured for the second ablution ; which, it is said, are an 
allegorical representation of the washing and embalming of the Lord's dead 
body. 

31. The Priest then sings the Post Communion ; which, it is pretended, ex- 
hibits the Saviour's resurrection. 

32. The Priest then turns to the congregati9n and salutes them; which is 
the image of Christ's appearance and salutation to his Mother and his Dis- 
ciples. 

33. The Priest repeats some prayers and reads the beginning of John's Gos- 
pel — which denote the doctrines that Christ taught his apostles during the 
forty days after he was raised from the dead, until his ascension. 

34. The Congregation is then dismissed with the words — " Ite, Missa est — 
Depart, the Mass is ended." To which the people answer—" God be thank- 
ed !" — to denote Christ's ascension. 

35. Then the Benediction is pronounced — which is a figure of the gifts pour- 
ed down upon the apostles by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. 

There is a continual succession of postures among the people during 
Mass. — " Kneeling, they say, expresses Humiliation and Repentance :— 
Standing denotes Confidence and Resolution : and sitting is a token of Stea- 
diness and Perseverance." 

With the Eucharist are connected two customs which in all Papal countries 
are considered of great importance ; the Blessed Bread ; and the Viaticum. 

Blessed Bread. — The Priest performs the ceremony of blessin^g bread on 
Sundays, and all other high festivals. The principal inhabitants are the 
donors; and the act is called "Presentation of the Blessed Bread." The 
Bread is adorned with tapers, and exhibited with great solemnity. After the 
offering, the Priest holds out to the Giver of the Bread the Paten to kiss, who 
then presents his oblation. The Bread is thus consecrated. The Priest having 
recited the Offertory, the clerk takes the Bread from the person who presents 
it, and gives it to the Sub-Deacon ; the Priest uncovered, stands before the 
altar; and recites a prayer, making a cross over the Bread, and afterwards 
sprinkling it with Holy Water. An Acolyte cuts it into several equal pieces, 
and distributes it among the congregation after Mass. " Blessed Bread" must 
not be sold, but if there is any surplus after the distribution, it must be given 
to the poor. 

Viaticum.— The Wafer is administered as a Viaticum, or provision for a 
journey to those whose life is in danger. In Popish countries the Wafer is 
always carried in idolatrous procession. After entering the sick person's 
apartnient, the Priest spreads the Corporal upon a Table, and lays the Fix 
upon it. ^ Then he and all the attendants worship the Wafer or Host. He 
next sprinkles the sick person and the room ; after which the Wafer, with 
some of the ceremonies for celebrating Mass, is duly administered. 

If a Priest is obliged to carry the Viaticum to a person infected with the 
plague ; he goes witnin about ten yards of the house with the wind at his 
back. Having inclosed the consecrated Wafer between two others, and hav- 
ing wrapt them in a sheet of white paper, he lays it on the ground, and covers 
it with a stone, to preserve his God from wind, rain, &c. That being com- 
pleted, the sick person or his attendant takes up the Wafers, being told by the 
Priest which of them he has consecrated for his God. The Priest performs 
the usual ceremonies ; as if he were close to the infected person. 

Similar precautions are observed in administering Extreme Unction to per- 
sons infected with the plague. The Priest takes a long rod. at the end oi 
which a piece of tow or cotton dipped in their holy oil is fixed ^ with which 



ROMISH CEREMONIES. 525 

the sick person is anointed with the prescribed words. After which they burn 
the cotton and the end of the rod in a fire prepared expressly for that purpose 
in a chafing-dish. 

4. Penance.— Those parts of Penance which comprise ceremonies worthy 
of separate description appertain to Auricular Confession^ and Excommw 
nication. 

Auricular Confession. — The priestly confessor has a surplice over his cas- 
sock, with a purple stole, and a square cap. The Confessional or Tribunal of 
-Penance should be open before, and have one or two lattice windows in it. 
When the penitent arrives at the confessional, she must make the sign of the 
cross, and ask the confessor's blessing. The confessor must be seated up- 
right, with gravity and modesty. His cap must be on his head ; and his face 
concealed, with his ear stooped towards the penitent. The penitent should 
kneel with clasped hands. Women and young maidens should not attend con- 
fession with naked breasts ; and their shoulders and arnis too much exposed. 
When the confession is ended, the confessor takes off his cap and the cover- 
ing from his face. He then stretches his right hand towards her ; and having 
put on his square cap, he absolves the penitent from all her sins. 

Excommunication. — The Excommunication with unlighted candles is pre- 
ceded by the Anathema. When an excommunicated person dies unabsolved ; 
an examination is made whether he gave signs of contrition. If it is decided 
that his body shall not be deprived of burial in ecclesiastical premises : the 
Priest puts on a black stole over the surplice, and in procession goes to the 
place where the corpse lies ; preceded by three clerks in surplices, one of whom 
carries the Wand, another the Holy Water, and the third bears the cross. If 
the body is not interred, he strikes it with his rod at every verse of the Mise- 
rere ; after which he absolves it, and it is buried in the usual grave-yard. If 
the corpse had been deposited m any other place, if possible it must be re- 
in oved ; but if it cannot be dug up, the Priest only strikes upon the grave with 
his rod. 

When the Pope in person assists at the fulmination of the solemn Excom- 
munication, he goes up to the high altar, accompanied by twelve Cardinal 
Priests, all of them carrying lighted tapers. The Pontiff" then sits down on 
his throne before that altar, and proclaims his anathema. On some occasions 
a Cardinal Deacon performs that office from a pulpit.— Then the bells ring 
in the same doleful manner as for the dead ; because all excommunicated per- 
sons in reference to the church are considered as deceased. After the anathema, 
all the assembly cry out three times with a loud voice— "Fiat! — Fiat I^Fiatl 
—So be it." At the same time the Pope and the Cardinals throw their lighted 
candles upon the ground, and the Acolytes tread them under their feet. 

Bull " In Coena. Domini^ — The grand Excommunication of all Heretics 
annually occurs in every Mass-house throughout the world on the Thursday 
prior to Easter. At Rome, it is announced from the gallery of the Blessing. 
The Pope is dressed in a red chasuble, and a stole of the same colour ; and 
stands elevated, that he may better be seen by the multitudes. The Sub-Dea- 
con on the Pope's left hand reads the Bull in Latin ; and the Deacon on his 
right in Italian, The lighted candles are then introduced and delivered to the 
Roman Pontiff* and all his court. When the Excommunication has been pro- 
mulged, the Pope and Cardinals extinguish their candles, and throw them 
among the crowd: after which the black cloth which covered ihe pulpit is 
taken away. 

To exhibit the " all deceivableness of unrighteousness" which is essential to 
Romanism, it must be subjoined, that immediately after the Pontiff" and his 
court have thus united in cursing all mankind except their own vassals, two 
Cardinal Deacons announce the "Plenary Indulgence" in Latin, and in Ital- 
ian. When the ringing of bells and the firing of cannon, which attend that 
delusive and wicked ceremony, have partially ceased, the Pope with feigned 
humility proceeds to wash the feet of twelve paupers m the Ducal Hall ; and 
waits upon them as a servant, while they are eating the dinner which has 
been prepared for them. Thus actually exemplifying the prophetical delinea- 
tions of the Apostle John respecting himself; Revelation 13: 11 ; being "a 
beast like a lamb, which speaks as a dragon." 

^.Extreme Unction. — The ceremonial of Extreme Unction includes other 
particular rites besides those which appertain to the anointing of the sick. 



526 ROMISK CEREMONIES. 

Unction. — Extreme Unctioivis administered only to those who are afflicted 
with mortal disease, or who are in aged decrepitude. It is not offered to crim- 
inals condemned to die, or to the impenitent. The Romanists affirm, that Ex- 
treme Unction assures to the recipients a final remission of their remaining 
sins, and would restore them to health, if it were for the good of their souls. 

The parts which are anointed are the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, the mouth, 
the hands, the feet, and the reins. Seven balls of cotton are prepared to wipe 
the parts which are to be anomted ; some crumbs of bread with which the 
Priest may rub his fingers; water to wash them ; a napkin to wipe them; and 
a taper to light him during the ceremony. The Priest must be dressed in his 
sjurplice and the purple stole. After the absolution, the Priest dips the thumb 
of his right hand into the oil, and anoints in the form of a cross. The clerk 
lights him with a consecrated taper, and holds a basin in a dish, in which the 
pieces of cotton are laid. The Priest commences by anointing the right eye; 
the eyelid being shut; then the left eye; next the ears ; after which the nos- 
trils ; the lips; the hands; the feet ; and the reins are successively touched. 
Having finished the anointing, the Priest washes his hands. The crumbs of 
bread and the water are cast into the fire ; but the pieces of cotton used in the 
anointing are burnt, and the ashes are transferred to the Sacrarium. 

Benediction of Grave- Yards. — The ceremony of blessing a ^rave-yard is 
performed either by a Prelate or a Priest specially delegated by him ; and the 
following ceremonial is performed on the occasion. On the evening prior to 
the day appointed for that purpose, a wooden cross of man's height is set up 
in the middle of the ground. Before it, on a piece of wood about sixteen inches 
high, are placed three tapers ; and a carpet is spread near the cross. The 
Priest being clothed in his vestments walks in procession, attended by an ex- 
orcist or acolyte carrying holy water ; another with the thurible ; two clerks 
with the ritual and three tapers, made of white wax, and the choir walking in 
pairs, all preceding the Priest. 

When they arrive at the spot, they stand around the cross or crosses, and 
the Priest delivers an address upon the holiness, privileges, and immunities of 
grave-yards. Three tapers are then lighted before the cross. Afterwards the 
Priest recites a prayer; then the litanies are chanted, and when these words 
are uttered— " We beseech thee to purify and bless this church-yard!" the 
Priest makes the sigti of the cross. After the litanies are ended, the Priest 
sprinkles the cross with Holy Water ; and while an Anthem and Miserere are 
sung, he goes round the church-yard, also sprinlding it. The Priest then takes 
one of the hghted tapers from the foot of the cross, and sets it on the top of 
it, and the otners are fixed on the tw^o arms of the cross. The ceremony ends 
with incensing and sprinkling the cross thrice with holy water. If a grave- 
yard has been profaned in any way, according to the Romish Canons, the 
same ceremonies are performed to purify and reconcile it. 

Funerals. — After the corpse is washed, a httle Crucifix must be put in its 
hands, which must lie upon its breast. At the feet there is placed a vessel full 
of holy water and a sprinkler, that with it visiters may sprinkle themselves 
and the corpse. Priests and Ecclesiastics after their decease are clothed in 
their respective habits; and the corpse of a Priest is carried to the grave only 
by Priests, as that of a common man is only by the Laity. It is also prescri- 
bed, that Ecclesiastics shall not put on mourning for their natural relatives, 
nor accompany them to the grave with their friends, but shall walk with the 
other Priests in their robes. 

Burial.— Y^hen the hour appointed for interment has arrived, notice is given 
bv the tolling of the bell for the assembhng of the Priests in their vestments. 
The officiating Priest then having put his black stole and chasuble over his 
surplice, they proceed to the house where the corpse hes. First walks the 
Exorcist with his holy water ; next the Cross bearer ; afterwards the Priests, 
with him who officiates at the end of the procession. The corpse must be laid 
at or near the door of the house ; and the coffin is surrounded with four or six 
lighted tapers of yellow wax. The cross bearer-is stationed at the head of the 
corpse; the officiating Priest at the feet; the person w^ho carries the holy 
water close behind him, and all the other attendants are placed near the f*riest, 
according to canonical precedence. Then the tapers and torches are lighted 
and given to those who are appointed to carry them ; which superstition, as is 
admitted by Papists themselves, was adopted from the ancient Pagans. 



ROMISH CEREMONIES. 627 

The Priest then sprinkles the corpse thrice with holy water ; after which the 
appointed anthems are sung; and at the end of the Miserere, the proces- 
Bion moves. Taper bearers precede— then the Lay Fraternities; next the per- 
sons who carry the holy water, and the cross; whom the Priests follow in 
pairs, at some distance from each other. The corpse goes after the Priests ; 
to which succeed the relatives and friends, and acquaintances of the de- 
ceased. 

When the procession arrives at the door of the Mass-house, a requiem is said. 
When within the house, a response is sung, in order that Saints and Angels 
may be induced to take charge of the dead person's soul. After the office of 
the dead, and if money sufficient is paid. Mass also is sung; then the Incense- . 
bearer, he who carries the holy water, the cross-bearer, and the taper carriers, 
and the choir advancing before him, the Priest approaches the corpse. After 
reciting a short prayer, and a chant from the choir, the Deacon presents the 
sprinkler to the Priest, who thrice sprinkles the corpse with h9ly water on 
both sides — and then receives the Thurible, with wiiich he also incenses the 
body thrice on each side, which is succeeded by a prayer. 

Then the corpse is carried to the grave, the procession moving in the same 
order as before. The choir sing an anthem as they walk. Havmg arrived at 
the grave, the Priest blesses the grave, and sprinkles and incenses the body 
thrice, and also the grave. After an anthem and the requiem, the Priest per- 
forms the triple sprinkling of the corpse, without incense; which is followed 
by another prayer and anthem. The body being laid in the grave, before the 
earth is thrown upon it, the relations and friends sprinkle it with holy water. 
According to Romish custom, the dead are commemorated on the third, 
seventh, and thirtieth days, and especially on their anniversary. 

6. Marriage. — The two chief distinctive ceremonies which are connected 
with the nuptials of Papists, are the prior Confession and Absolution ; and the 
Priest's blessing the conjugal bed with the sprinkling of holy water. They 
are both part of that practical impurity which is an equally prominent charae- 
teristic of Romanism as its bloodthirstiness and idolatry. 

II. Festivals. — That all the Festivals and Ceremonies of Popery were ori- 
ginally derived from Paganisni is as evident as any fact recorded in the history 
of mankind. In the " Antiquities of Gaul," page 124, when narrating the life 
of Clovis, one of the first kings of the Franks, the author, Fauchet, thus de- 
scribes the introduction of the Heathen customs among the adherents of the 
Roman Pontiff. The Popes and their Missionaries, in order to win the souls 
of the Heathens to the profession of Christ Jesus, instead of the Heathen 
Pervigilia and Lectisternia substituted the Eves and Anniversaries of their 
Martyrs : and instead of F'ebrua, Vinalia, Ambarvalia^ Robigalia, &c., which 
were so many Heathen impious observances, they enacted, that the converts 
should keep the Purification, &c., at the same periods of the year ; and in times 
of affliction they made processions, rogations, litanies, or supplications; on 
which, and in the Nudipedalia^ which were processions and journeyings made 
barefooted, they used to call upon Jesus Christ instead of Jupiter; whereby 
they countermined Paganism, and warded off the reproaches of the Heathen. 

The Romish Festivals are divided into movable, double, half-double, and 
simple feasts. They are distinguished chiefly by their difl:erent degrees of pomp, 
and the quantity of images, festoons, flowers, wax tapers, and the bell ring- 
ing, with illuminations of the houses, in which the devotees reside. 

In Italy, the wealthy young men celebrate feasts to the honour of their mis- 
tresses, with Masses and Vespers the same as for a dead Saintess. That 
mummery is performed on the festival of the Saint whose name their mistress 
bears; so that while the ceremonial is nominally in honour of the saint in the 
calendar, it is nothing more than an excuse on the part of the lover and his 
ajfsociates, combined with the blasphemous craftiness of the Priests, under 
tne pretext of a religious festival, to devote the day after the Mass is closed, to 
dissolute festivals, in which parents are obliged, however unwillingly, to in- 
dulge their daughters; for fear of exciting the indignation of the Priesthood, 
who receive large sums of money for this scandalous commingling of their 
protended religious rites with lewdness and intemperance. 

Calendar. — The Roman Calendar of Feasts and Stations throughout the 
year comprises the following appointments as they are observed at Rome, and 
in the dominions of the Pope, called Peter's Patrimony. 



528 ROMISH CEREMONIES. 

J'anuary.—l, New Year's day.— 2. Octave of Stephen.— 3. Octave of John; 
and Feast oiSainte Genevieve. — 4. Octave of the Innocents ; and two female 
saints, Bibliana and Demetria.— 5. Feast of Telesphorus. — 6. Epiphany. That 
is a great Festival.— 7. Julian, JVIartyr.— 8. Octave of the Circumcision ; and 
Feast of Indulgence. — 9. Julian and Celsus, Martyrs.— 10. Agatho.— 11. Hy- 
ginus. — 12. Benedict or Bennet ; Indulgence and Feast. — 13. Octave of the 
Epiphany.— 14. Hilary of Poictiers ; and Feast of the holy name of Jesus. — 
15. Maurus.— 16. Marcellus.— 17. Anthony, Marula, and John. — 18. Peter's 
chair at Rome; and Saint Prisons.- 19. Marius and Martha.— 20. Fabian 
and Sebastian. — 21. Agnes. The Roman Breviary relates, that ''Agnes was 
stripped naked to be carried to a brothel for defilement ; upon which her hair 
miraculously became so thick and long, that it covered her better than her 
clothes; and when she entered the place of corruption a dazzling light sur- 
rounded her; and a white garment dropped upon her from above, which fitted 
her exactly, so that it was believed that an an^el made it. The son of the 
Prefect attempting to approach her, was chokea by the devil and fell down 
dead."— 22. Vincent and Anastasius. — 23. Emarantia; Ildefonsus, and Rai- 
mond. — 24. Timothy. — 25. Conversion of Paul.— 26. Polycarp.— 27. John 
Chrysostom.— 28, Second Feast of Agnes.— Last Sunday^in January ; Trans- 
lation of the Virgin's Image; and Title of the Cross of Christ. — 29. Several 
Saints.— 30. Martina. — 31. Six different Saints. 

February.— First Sunday, Feast. 1. Ignatius ; and Ephrem.— 2. Purifica- 
tion of the Virgin ; a great Festival. — 3. Blasius. — 4. Entychus.— 5. Agatha ; 
and three Martyrs of Japan.— 6. Dorothea.— 7. Romuald.— 8. Pelagius ; and 
John.— 9. Apollina ; and John .—10. Sainte Scholastica ; Sotera ; and 
William. — 11. Severinus. — 12. Eulalia. — 13. Gregory; and Feast for the man- 
ifestation of the Image of the Virgin. — 14. Valentme. — 15. Faus^tina and Jo- 
vita.— 16. Juliana.— 17. Gabinus. — 18. Leo. — 19. Peter.— 20. Peters chair at 
Antioch.— 21. Polycarp; Saint hazarus ; Sainte Margaret.— 22. Matthias, and 
Bibliana. — 23. Felix and Gregory. — 24. Saint Bon.— 25. Romanus. 

March.— AW Fridays in March there is an Indulgence at Peter's Cathedral 
granted by the Pope, who with the Cardinals goes there in procession.— 1. 
Suithres; and Aubin. — 2. Soumusus ; and Basilicus. — 3. Asterus. — 4. Lucius; 
and Casimir. — 5. Phocas.— 6. Fridelein; and Cyrillus. — 7. Thomas Aquinas; 
and Feast of the Booksellers, of whom Thomas is Patron Saint. — 8. Feasts 
of John : Julius ; and Benedictin. — 9. Sainte Frances.— 10. Forty Martvrs. 
—11. Firminus.— 12. Gregory. — 13. Antoninus ; and Euphrasia.— 14. Matilda. 
— 15. Loiiginus. — 16. Felix. — 17. Joseph of Arimathea ; and >S'ai7i^ Patrick. — 
18. Cyril; and "Image of our Lady."— 19. Joseph. — 20. Joachim ; Ambrose; 
Sedonius ; and others.— 21. Bennet. — 22. Gregory. — 23. Bmno. — 24. Peter. — 
25. Annunciation of the Virgin ; a great Festival. The Pope performs the 
ceremony of making Nuns. Misson, in his "Voyage to Italv," describes it, 
when there were three hundred and fifty girls presented to be married to the 
Pope," as the mummery is fraudfully denominated; but only thirty- two of 
them would take the veil.— 26. Castulus.— 27. Robert.— 28. Sixtus.— 29. Eus- 
tasius. — 30. Quirinus; the ancient Romulus. — 31. Ealbina. 

Lent. — The Feast of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima Sundays 
and Tuesday at Shrove Tide, all have reference to some similar times among 
the Heathens at that period. 

Ash Wednesday is a great Festival, so denominated from the Ceremony of 
giving ashes. The ashes must be made from the branches of Olive, or some 
other tree which was blessed on the Palm Sunday of the prior year. The 
Priest blesses the ashes by making the sign of the cross on them, and perfum- 
ing them with Incense. The ashes are laid on the foreheads of the people. _ 

Carnaval, Shrove Tide. Lent, and Ember weeks. — The Popish Carnaval ori- 
ginated in the determination of some of the nominal Christians to entice the 
Pasans by reviving the ancient Bacchanalia under other names. The Lupercalia 
of Faunus, and the Megalesia of Cybele, the extreme licentiousness of which 
was promoted by the masks and disguises in which the parties concealed 
themselves, are the prototypes of the modern Masquerades, and Romish Car- 
navals. 

The duration of the Lent Fast varies in different places, and also in stnct- 
ness of regimen. All meat, and wine, and other luxuries are prohibited, an^i 
the celebration. of marriage; but the Prelates and Priests dispense with ]i^ 



ROMISH CEREMONIES. 529 

roles, if there is money sufficient paid for the indulgence. At Rome there lire 
forty stations which are appointed to be visited, one for each day during Lent ; 
and by the more superstitious people they all are attended. They commence 
with Ash Wednesday and close with Palm Sunday. On the fourth Sunday in 
Lent, the Pope blesses the Golden Rose; with Frankincense, Holy Water, 
Balm, and Musk, mixed together. That Rose, the Romanists say, is remark- 
able for its colour, fragrance, and taste ; and the Gold, the Musk, and the 
Balm, are emblems of the Divine, Spiritual, and Human Nature of Christ. 

Palm Sunday is a high day, on which there is a procession with palms, ia 
imitation of the Lord's entry into Jerusalem. 

There are festivals and stations also on the ensuing Monday, Tuesday, and 
Wednesday. On Thursday the Pope carries the Wafer God in procession to 
the sepulchre; with Crosses and Incense. After which the Chief Altar is 
uncovered to represent the ignominious manner by which our Saviour was 
stripped of his garments. Tnen the Pope is carried to the Gallery, whence 
the Bull "In Ccena Domini" is promulged. The washing of the Poor 
Men's feet, and the blessing of the Oils, succeed. 

On " Good Friday,''^ there is a variety of ceremonies representing the various 
perts of the Lord's suiferings ; among which the exhibition of the cross is the 
most characteristic of the Romish impiety. The Priest elevates the cross with 
these words— "Ecce lignum crucis — Behold the wood of the Cross!" Then 
the Congregation reply — "In quo salus mundi pependit — On which the Saviour 
of the world was extended." The Choir subioin— " Venite, et adoremus— 
Come and adore !" — Upon which all of them kneel and worship the Wood. 
Processions in great variety at different places are found in the evening of that 
day. 

On Easter Eve a number of additional ceremonies are performed, with the 
blessing of the New Fire — of the Paschal Candles — of the Fonts for Exor- 
cism — and the Exorcism of the Catechumens. 

Easter Sunday. — The Pope himself sings Mass. The holy face on Veroni- 
ca's handkerchief, the Soldier's Lance, and the true Cross are publicly exhi- 
bited. After which the Pope is carried to the Gallery, whence he blesses the 
people. Two Deacons dressed in white, seated at the Altar, represent the two 
Angels at the Lord's sepulchre. The Deacon recites the Confiteor or Confes- 
sion before the Pope, who makes the sign of the cross, and pronounces abso- 
lution. 

During the six days of Easter week, there are stations and ceremonies simi- 
lar to those on the preceding Sunday. The last of the connected Festivals is 
that on Low Sunday, the octave of Easter, when the relics are exposed; and 
the newly received Catechumens appear clothed in white garments. 

April. — 1. Venantius. — 2. Mary of Egypt. — 3. Francis. — 4. Agapita and 
Ghionia.— 5. Vincent.— 6. Sixtus.— 7. Albirus.— 8. Translation of Sainte Mo- 
nica. — 9. Dedication of the church to Peter and P»Iarcellinus.— 10. Leo. — IL 
Dedication of the Church Ara CoeH.— 12. Julius.— 13. Justin.— 14. Several 
Martyrs. — 15. Basilisia.— 16. Several Saints : and Translation of the heads of 
Peter and Paul. — 17. Avicetus. — 18. Bartholomew ; and Eleutherius. — 19. Leo. 
—20. Agnes.— 21. Anselm.— 22. Soterus and Caius.— 23. Saint George. This 
is the day for blessing the standard. It is an ancient Pagan custom prolong- 
ed ; for at the same time the old Romans used to celebrate the festival of Mars, 
and consecrate the military Eagles. — 24. Melitus. — 25. Mark. A great festival 
and procession ; after the example, and on the same day of the Pagan Robi- 
galia ; being rogations for rain, fine weather, &c. When the Priest wishes to 
divert the course of a thunder storm, he orders the bells to be run^^ and sprink- 
les Holy Water in the airP^ — 26. Several Saints. — 27. Anastasius. — 28. Vitalis. 
— 29. Peter; nnd Peleninus.— 30. Catharine. 

May.— On all Sundays in May, various Indulgences.— 1. Philip and James. 
—2. Athanasius. — 3. Finding of the Cross; and several ^Fartyrs. — 4. Monica; 
and the Holy Shroud.— 5. Austin. — 6. John.— 7. Several Saints.— 8. Appari- 
tion of Michael the Archangel.— 9. Gregory Nazianzen.— 10. Several Saints. — 
11. Several Saints.— 12. Several Martyrs.— 13. Dedication of the Rotunda.— 
14. Boniface.— 15. Isidorus; and Q-uirina, wife of Romulus. — 16. Uhaldus ; 
and Pelerinus.— 17. Translation of Bernardin.— 18. Venantius ; and Felix.— 
19. Pudentiana; Ives; and Peter.— 20. Bernardm.— 21. Translation of Relics. 
—22. Roraanus ; and Rete.— 23. Angelas.— 24. Translation of Dominic— 26. 
45 



530 ROMISH CEREMONIES. 

Urban ; Translation of Francis ; and Mary Magdalen. — 26. Eleutheriue ; a»d 
Philip.— 27. John.— 28. Germanus.— 29. Cononus.— 30. Felix ; andExuperaa- 
tius. — 31. Petronilla. ^ 

Whitsuntide.— On Ascension day, the Paschal Candle is extinguished to 
show that the Saviour returned to heaven. The Altar is covered with Images, 
Flowers, and Relics, and the Pope blesses the people with plenary Indul- 
gences. 

There is a great procession on Whitsunday, and the oflBciating Priest is dress- 
ed in scarlet; as an emblem, the Papists say, of the Holy Ghost, who de- 
scended on the day of Pentecost upon the Apostles in the shape of fiery 
tongues. It is rather an emblem of " the scarlet coloured beast, and the wo- 
man arrayed in purple and scarlet colour," portrayed in Revelation 17 : 1 — 
8, 18. 

Procession of Corpus Christi. — This is one of the costly festivals univer- 
sally kept by all Papists, intended to commemorate the finding of the first 
wafer which contained the body of the Lord. Cross Bearers, Wax Tapers, 
Incense Carriers, and a motley multitude of Boys, and Priests, precede the pre- 
late, or other ecclesiastic who carries the Wafer under a magnificent canopy, 
around to all the stations appointed for that purpose; for wnich, absolutions, 
dispensations, and plenary indulgences are granted by the Pope to every infa- 
tuated devotee. It is one of the high days for Romish pompous mummery 
and wickedness. 

June.—\. Theobald. — 2. Peter ; and Marceliinus. — 3. Pelerinus.— 4. Queri- 
nus.— 5. Boniface.— 6. Several Saints. — 7. Robert. — 9. Primus; and Felicia- 
anus. — 10. Translation of Philip.— U. Barnabas; and Translation of Gre- 
gory. — 12. Several Festivals of Saints.— 13. ASaini^ Anthony.— Second Sunday 
m June. "Festival of our Lady's Consolation." — 14. Basil. — 15. Vitus; and 
Modestus. — 16. Q,uirico; Juletus; and Lutgarda.— 18. Marcus; and Marcel- 
iinus.— 19. Guvasius; and Protasius. — 20. Novatus ; and Solano.— 21. Deme- 
tria; and Gonzaga.— 22. Paulinus.— 23. John.— 24. Nativity of John Bap 
tist, a great festival at the Masshonse where it is published; they pretend to 
show his head in the original charger ! — 25. Eloi. — 26. John ; and Paul. — 27. 
Leo; and Paul. This is a great day for Illuminations and Fireworks. — 29. 
Peter; and Paul. The Pope sings Mass ; and the pretended heads of the two 
Apostles are exhibited, with all kinds of silly sports.— 30. Commemoration of 
Paul. 

July. — 1. Octave of John Baptist. — 2. Visitation of Virgin Mary.— 3. Lan- 
franc— 4. Elizabeth. — 5. Zoe.— 6. Octave of Peter and Paul.— 7. Translation 
of Thomas Becket. — 8. Aquila; and Priscilla. — 9. Zeno.— 10. Several Saints. 
— 11. Pius. — 12. Gualbert.— 13. Anacletus.— 14. Bonaventure.— 15. Henry.— 16. 
Feast of " Our Lady of Cannes." — 17. Alexis. — 18. Symphqrosa. — 19. Epaph- 
rius. — 20. Margaret. In the Roman Breviary, the following Legend is re- 
corded of that Margaret. " She prayed that she might have a personal con- 
flict with the Devil. He appeared in the form of a Dragon, and swallowed 
her : but she instantly armed herself with the sign of the cross, upon which 
the Dragon burst asunder, and the Virgin came from him unhurt." — 21. Prax- 
eda.— 22. Mary Magdalen.— 23. ApoUinarius.— 24. Christina.— 25. James.— 26. 
Anna. — 27. Pantaleon. — 23. Several Saints. — 29. Several Saints.— 30. Abdon; 
and Sennen.-^31. Ignatius. 

August.— \. Peter in Vinculis; and the Saints^ the Maccabees. — 2. Ste- 
phen; and several other festivals. — 3. Finding of the body of Stephen. — 4. 
Dominic. — 5. "Our Lady of the Snows." — 6. Transfiguration of the Lord. — 
T. Albert Carm. — 8. Cyriacus ; and Smaragdus.— 9. Romanus.— 10. Laurence. 
—11. Susanna ; and Jaurin. — 12. Clara. — 13. HjiDoUtus. — 14. Eusebius. — 15. 
Assumption of the Virgin. High Festival. — 16. Roch ; and Hyacinth.— 17. 
Octave of Laurence ; and Clara. — 18. Helena; who it is reported found the 
true cross by a miracle. — 19. Lewis; and Magnus. — 20. Bernard.— 21. Cyria- 
cus; and Ptolomei. — 22. Octave of the Assumption ; and other Feasts. — 23. 
Several Saints. — 25. Bartholomew; and other Saints.— 26. Zephyrinus; and 
Alexander. — 28. Austin. — 29. Decollation of John Baptist. Several. heads of 
him are shov/n. — 30. Several Feasts. — 31. Nonnatus. 

' September.— I. Giles.— 2. Bonoso.— 3. Seraphia.— 4. Thesaura. — 5. Bertin. 
—6. Eleutherius.— 7. Adrian.— 8. Nativity of the Virgin Mary. — 9. Gregory. — 
10. Nicholas.— 11. Protusj and Hyacinthus.— 12. Feast of the name of Maiy. 



ROMISH CEREMONIES. ' 631 

— 13. Martin.—U. Exaltation of the Cross.— 15. Octave of the Nativity of our 
Lady. — 16. Cornelius; Euphemia; and other Saints. — 17. Stigma-ta of Saint 
Francis.— 18. Sophia.— 19. Sylvester.— 20. Eustachius.- 21. Matthews. — 22. 
Mauritius; Digna and Emerita. — 23. Lewis; and Thecla. — 24. Lady of Mercy; 
and Girard. — 25. Herculanus. — 26. Cyprian and Justina. — 27. Cosmus and 
Damianus. — 28. Several Saints. — 29. Dedication of the temple to Michael. It 
is reputed of that saint, that by his orders two prodigious rocks were removed 
from their position, to render the place suitable for the erection of the Mass- 
house to his honour. — 30. Jerom. 

October.— First Sunday, Feast of the Rosary. — 1. Remigius.— 2. Leger: 
and Guardian Angels.— 3. Candidus. — 4. SainC Francis.— 5. Placidus; and 
Gallus.— 6. Bruno.— 7. Mark; Sergius; and Saint Bacchus.— 8. Bridget; 
and Simeon. 9. Denis.— 10. Bsrtrand, and others.— 11. Translation of Aus- 
tin.— 12. Rodolphus.— 13. Several Feasts.— 14. Calixtus.— 15. Theresa.— 16. 
Gallus.— 17. Hedwiga ; and others. — 18. Luke : Feast of the Painters.— 19. 
Peter.— 20. Sedalus.— 21. Ursula, and her 11,000 Virgins.— 22. Battario.— 23. 
Paschasius. — 24. Martin. — 25. Crispin ; Feast of the Shoemakers ; and other 
Saints. — 26. Evaristus. — 28. Simon and Jude. — 29. Theodorus. — 30. Germa- 
nus. — 31. Nemesius andLucillus. 

Nov ember. —l. All Saints. This Festival commemorates the dedication of 
the Pantheon to All Saints, which Agrippa had erected in honour of Jupiter and 
All Gods. It serves for exactly the same impious purpose now, as it did 1800 
years ago, with only the names changed. — 2. All Souls. Commemoration of 
the Dead. This custom is stolen from the Pagans. This is a great festival. 
A pall and shroud are spread upon the steps to the throne of the Pope or of 
the Prelate ; who ihrice sprinkles the shr9ud with holy water, and perfumes 
the pall with incense three times, after which the requiem and requiescant are 
" said or sung." — 3. Malachy; and Herbert. — 4. Charles. — 5. Zachariah ; and 
Translation of the Innocents. — 6. Leonard. — 10. Tryphon ; and Andrew. — 
11. Martin.— 12. Several Saints.— 13. Several Festivals. — 14. Laurence.— 15. 
Several Saints.— 16. Edmund.— 17. Thaumaturgus.— 19. Elizabeth.— 20. Sev- 
eral Saints.— 21. Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple.— 22. Cecilia. 
— 23. Clement; and Felicitas. — 24. Chrysogorius.— 25. Catharine.— 26. Sylves- 
ter. — 27. James.— 28. Gregory; James; and others.— 29. Saturninus. — 30. 
Andrew. 

December. —I. Eloi.- 2. Bibiana.— 3. Macerus.— 4. Barbara.— 5. Sabas. — 6. 
Nicholas. — 7. Ambrose. — First Sunday in Advent ; the Pope carries the wafer 
in procession.— On the second Sunday there is high mass.—'On the third Sun- 
day the Altar is adorned with Images, Relics, and Flowers. — 8. Conception of 
the Virgin Mary.— 9. Melchiades. — 10. Salvator; and Feast of "Our Lady of 
Loretto." — 11. Damasus. — 12. Valerius. — 13. Lucia; Feast of the Martyrs; 
and other Commemorations,— 14. Angelus.— 15. Claudius. — 16. Festival of the 
three saints who were cast into Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace in the plains of 
Dura.— Nov ena. There is a particular office for the nine days preceding 
Christmas, to represent the nine months' pregnancy ; during which the altar 
is pompously ornamented with Flowers, and Relics ; and a magnificently dec- 
orated Image of the Virgin Mary. — 17. Translation of Ignatius.— 20. Fausta. 
21. Thomas. On that feast are shown, the "Ark of the Covenant, and th-e 
Table at which Christ ate the last Passover,"— 22. Flavian.— 23. Victoria. — 
24. Vigil of the Nativity. Mass at Vespers ; and midnight Mass.— 25. Christ- 
mas day. The Pope celebrates Mass in Pontificalibus, and dehvers a honiily. 
On the evening previous, the Pope blesses the sword and ducal hat, by sprink- 
ling and incensing them. If the person for whom they are intended is at 
Rome, he receives them from the Pope after having kissed his hands and feet. 
— 26. Stephen.— 27. John.— 28. Innocents.— 29. Thomas of Canterbury.— 30. 
Exuperantius ; and Marcellus. — 31. Sylvester; and a Service at Vespers for 
the circumcision of Jesus. . 

Processions. — The Popish processions are derived from Paganism j and in 
all the imposing features are exact transcripts of them. They vary m differ- 
ent countries, and have different degrees of superstition commingled with them; 
but in the adorning of the houses with flags and f^reen boughs, and strewing 
the streets with flowers, and conducting the principal Ecclesiastic, who car- 
ries the object of worship, under a magnificent canopy, with crosses, paint- 
•jigs, tapers, and incense, whether it be an image, or a box of relics, or the 



532 ROMISH CEREMONIES. 

Wafer God, they all agree. The Banner or Image is carried first by; a Priest 
in his Surplice. Children follow by couples. Tnen the Exorcist with Holy 
Water — the Incense Bearer with his smoking censer— next the Cross Bearer 
with " Ceroferaries." The Priests march in pairs. The Celebrant walks last 
of all. After the Canopy, the people follow indiscriminately, except that the 
women and girls are last in theprocession. At each place where they halt in 
the road, Indulgences are granted by the Pope's authority to all the motley 
crowds who form the procession. Nine days' devotions are peculiarly of hea- 
then origin ; and so important and efficacious is the number nine, that we 
are assured, nine Masses performed for nine days are more acceptable to God 
than twelve Masses for twelve days. 

Relics. — At Aix la Chapelle, the rehcs are exposed once in seven years fbr 
worship. The following is one of the proclamations which is issued, that the 
people may make ready to adore them according to the prescribed ritual. 
"The head and right arm of Saint Cornelius are to l3e exposed, by whose me- 
diation may the Lord Jesus preserve you from the faUing sickness, and after this 
life bestow on you the kingdom of heaven ! Amen." 

The translation of Relics is a grand papistical ceremony; and after the Pre- 
late's blessing, they are carried in procession. All persons who join the pro- 
cession are promised plenary indulgences. The streets where the procession is 
to pass are cleansed and ornamented ; the houses are decorated with tapestry ; 
the Masshouse and its altars are magnificently embeUished; and the Images 
of the Saints are arranged in order for public adoration. The Celebrant, in 
his robes, goes to the place where the relics are, prays before them kneeling: 
blesses the incense; incenses the relics thrice, and then they are removed 
with tapers to the place appointed for their reception. Music precedes, then 
the Images of the Saint, next those who carry tapers; then the Ecclesiastics 
of the order; after whom follow the Prelate in his pontifical robes. During 
the procession two " Thuriferaries" are constantly incensing them; accom- 
panied by a musician singing the praises of the Saint, whose relics the Prelate 
IS carrying; for neither relics nor images must be carried by laymen. The 
legends reported of relics, the miracles which they have performed, and the 
mode of discovering their genuineness, transcend all the other marvellous 
absurdities which are imputed to human credulity. Two examples will suffice. 
—1. Whenever any bones are dug up and are carried to the Congregation of 
Relics to identify and name them ; the honour of appropriating them is always 
transferred to any devotee, who will pay the sum demanded for the privilege 
of declaring that they are the remains of the Saint whom he patronizes. 
Aimon; Tableau de la Cou7'de Borne. — 2. The Carthusian Friars at Cologne 
pretend that they have the hem of the garment that Christ wore, which the 
woman afflicted with the loss of blood touched in order to be cured. The 
ladies of that city, in a certain dehcate condition, send wine to those Friars, 
that the relic may be steeped in it, and of which they drink, thereby expecting 
to obtain infallible relief. 

Adoration of the Pope. — After the Pope is elected, he is pompously dressed 
in his Cassock, Rochet, Camail, a cap of red satin, and shoes of red cloth. 
Then he is carried in his Chair before the Altar, upon which the Cardinals 
adors the Pope on their knees, kissing his foot and right hand. The Pope in 
retuin gives each Cardinal a kiss on the right cheek. Then the first Cardinal 
Deacon announces the fact from the balcony in these words—" Annuncio vobis 
gaudium magnum, habemus Papam ; I bring you glad tidings; we have a 
Pope." Upon which all the bells in the city are rung, the cannon from the 
Castle Angelo are discharged, and music of every kind resounds throughout 
Rome. 

In the evening, the new Pope is conducted to Sixtus';Chapel, and being set 
upon the altar is adored the second time. After some childish ceremonies, the 
Pope is carried under a magnificent scarlet canopy to the great altar of Peter's 
church. There the Cardinals adore him the third time, who are succeeded by 
the Foreign Ambassadors. ThePope having subsequently blessed the assem- 
bled multitudes, is then placed in his chair, and twelve men in long scarlet 
cloaks, support him on their shoulders to his apartments. It is a Roman dog- 
ma, that " the Pope's feet ought to be kissed after the same manner, and with 
the same respect, as the cross and other holy Images are kissed." In confor- 
mity to which position, Pope Innocent III. in his decretal, affirms — " The 



ROMISH CEREMONIES. 533 

Church being the spouse of Christ^ s Vicar^ brought me in Tnarriagefull power 
over all temporal and spiritual concerns. ^The Mitre is the embfem of the lat- 
ter ; and the crown of the former ; and they both intimate that the Pope is 
King of Kings^ and Lord of Lords ^ 

Coronation of the Pope. — The Pope's dress is composed partly of the triple 
crown and the keys. This triple crown is designed to declare that he is High 
Priest, Emperor, and Kmg, and therefore superior to all earthly Potentates. 
One of the Keys represents that he has the power to open heaven to believers : 
the second, that he can exclude sinners ; and the third, denotes his universal 
knowledge and infallibility : which three keys represent his supreme power as 
God^s vicegerent over all the monarchs of the world, and his right when he 
pleases to dethrone them. After all the preparations are made, and the Pope 
IS duly dressed in his amict, albe, girdle, stole, red chasuble, and mitre; 
his private attendants dressed in their ceremonial habits advance. They are 
■followed by the court according to rank, until the Pope's chaplains move with 
the triple crown, mitre, &c. The grand cross immediately follows with the 
Cardinals after it ; and next to them the Pope is carried in his chair. Near 
the Gate, and under the Portico of Peter's Church, the Pope sits upon a throne, 
where his foot is kissed by all the Priests who hold any ecclesiastical benefice 
at Rome. Thence he is carried to the high altar, where he worships the Wafer 
God, and thence to the Gregorian Chapel, where the feudal salutations all are 
performed. After the Pope nas washed his hands four times during the sing- 
nig of the Mass, he is disrobed. The Cardinal Deacon then puis on a white 
garment, with his Cassock, Amict, Albe, Girdle, Dalmatica, Stole, Gloves, 
and Mitre. The procession then recommences, during which the Master of 
the Ceremonies carries a lighted wax taper in one hand, and a basin in the 
other, in which Castles and Palaces of Flax are exhibited, and to which the 
Master of the Ceremonies sets fire three times, saying, " Behold, Holy Fa- 
ther, how^ the glory of this world passeth av/ay." 

When the procession has arrived at the foot of the High Altar, the Pope 
makes a short prayer, and then begins the Introit, having a Cardinal on each 
side, and two behind him as assistants. After the Confession, the mitre is 
put on by the Deacons : then he sits on his throne, and the mitre is removed 
from his head. The Cardinal Deacon having dressed him in the Pallium, the 
Pope then ascends the Altar, kisses the Gospels, and incenses the Altar. The 
Mitre is then fixed on the Pope's head, and the Cardinal incenses him three 
times. The Pope then returns to his throne, where all the Cardinals attend, 
and taking oflf their mitres, adore him ; and all the other dignitaries follow 
them according to their rank. 

The Pope then rises, lays dovvn his mitre, ascends the altar, and sings the 
Introit, the Kyrie, and the Gloria in excelsis. Then he resumes his seat. After 
which the Cardinals and Priests sing some anthems, and recite the litanies of 
the saints. Some trifling ceremonies having been performed, the Pope is next 
carried to the Benediction pew; and as soon as he is seated, the coronation 
anthem is sung, and the coronation prayer read. Then the mitre is taken oflf", 
and the triple crown put on the Pope's head by the Cardinal Deacon who thus 
addresses him : " Receive this Tiara embellished with three crowns, and never 
forget, that you are the Father of Princes and Kings, the Supreme Judge of 
the Universe, and on the earth, Vicar of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. 
Subsequently, the Pope three times blesses the people; and a plenary Indul- 
gence is published by the Cardinals. The Pope then withdraws to the Vatican, 
and the multitudes separate to devote the day to uninterrupted amusement, 
illuminations, and profligacy. 

Within a few days after the Coronation, the new Pope proceeds in the most 
solemn and pompous manner to take possession of his spvereignty at the 
Church of John Lateran. The procession commences with Military Light 
Horsemen, next the Mace-bearers of tjae Cardinals alsp mounted ; then follow 
the attendants of the Cardinals, Ambassadors, and Princes; after whom suc- 
ceed the Pope's stable servants with his horses ; next the nobihty and titled 
rnen all on horseback ; then the Pope's Mace-bearers, Trumpeters, Gentlemen 
of the Bed-chamber, Pages, Officers of State, Officers of the Court, the Gov- 
ernors of the fourteen districts of Rome, the Ambassadors, Relatives of the 
l-ope ; and then the triple cross immediately before the Pontiff; who is carried 
by fii'ty young Roman gentlemen, attended by his principal household off^^^-" 
45* 



534 ROMIsn CEREMONIES. 

The Cardinals in pairs go after him on horseback ; then Patriarchs, Arch- 
bishops, and Prelates. The procession is closed by a guard of cavalry. When 
the Pope arrives at the church he ascends the throne, where he is clothed in 
his pontifical robes and mitre. The Canons having kissed his feet, the Cardi- 
nal Archbishop presents him the keys of the church. The Pope then walks 
to the great gate and sprinkles the people with holy water, while the Cardinal 
incenses him. After which he is carried to a throne prepared in the Choir, 
where the Cardinals do him honour; and then he is conducted with the Tiara 
on his head to the place where he pronounces his benediction upon the 
people. 

Benediction of Bells, — That ceremony is commonly called "Christening 
the Bells." After the Bell is completed, it must be so placed, that the Priest 
may be able to wash it, and give it the Holy Unction. There must be provided 
for the cerernony, sprinklers ; holy water-pot ; saltcellar ; napkins ; vessels for 
oil and chrism; pastils; incense; myrrh; cotton; basin and ewer; and 
crumbs of bread. 

When all is prepared, the celebrant, dressed in his albe, stole, and white plu- 
vial, with the Deacon similarly robed, walk in procession. The Thuriferary 
precedes ; then two Ceroferaries, with lighted tapers ; and next Priests two 
and two ; and the Celebrant last of all. When they are arrived where the bell 
is, the Miserere is sung. Then all uncover ; and the Celebrant exorcises and 
blesses the salt and water; and prays that by the influence of the holy water, 
the Bell may protect the people from the devices of Satan, drive away ghosts 
and diseases, nush boisterous winds, and raise devotion in the heart. He then 
mixes the salt and water, makes three crosses over them, "in the name of 
the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost," and says, " God be with you !" 
The Celebrant next takes his sprinkler, and begiiis to wash the bell. I)uring 
the absolution psalms are sung ; and the bell is wiped dry with hnen cloths. 

The Celebrant then dips the thumb of his right hand in the oil, and apphes 
it to the middle of the bell, with the sign of the cross. The bell afterward re- 
ceives seven other crosses. Four crowns are also made with the chrism, as the 
seal of benediction, in the name of the Trinity : and the Celebrani then nomi- 
nates the saint, for whom some person stands as Sponsor, and whose name 
the bell bears. 

Then the Celebrant takes Incense, Myrrh, and Pastils, and puts them into 
the Thurible, which is placed under the Bell, that it may receive the smoke. 
That perfume is impiously called, " the Dew of the Holy Ghost." After the 
Fumigation the Incense is blessed; the book of the Gospel is then perfumed ; 
and the lesson is next read. Then the Celebrant kisses the book, and the 
Deacon incenses him. The ceremony is closed by the Celebrant making the 
sign of the cross over the bell wdth his right hand. The Papists say, that 
" the benediction of the bells devotes them to God's service, so that they con- 
tribute very much towards the success of the Priest in his excorcisms." Ima- 
fes ; Holy Shrouds; Robes; Relics; Lambs; Palls; and other things, are 
lessed with much of the same impious ceremonial. 

Ceremonies at the Reception of Nuns. — The Abbess always takes the ca- 
nonical oath of FideUty to the Ordinary," before the Prelate gives her his 
blessing, the Rule, and the Veil. 

The vow of Virginity which is prescribed for Nuns, it is infallibly certain 
scarcely ever can be smcere or true ; from the nature of the prior examina- 
tion through which the candidate must always pass. It is impossible that 
any female can remain undefiled, after answering the questions which invaria- 
bly are propounded under the hypocritical pretext of ascertaining whether sne 
means to keep the vow of chastity. 

On the Sunday or Festival appomted ; the Habit, Veil, and Ring of the can- 
didate are carried to the Altar. She is conducted to the Prelate by her nearest 
relatives, two Matrons are her "Bridesmaids;" for the wicked unnatural farce 
is impiously called the marriage of the Nun to Jesus Christ. The Prelate 
says Mass. After the Gradual ; the candidate and her attendants, with their 
faces covered, enter the Masshouse, and proceed towards the Prelate, whtle 
the anthem is sung respecting the coming of the Bridegroom to meet them, 
and they light their lamps. The Arch Priest presents her to the Prelate, wbo 
cafis her in a chanting tone, and she similarly answers. Before the Prek.te 
she then kneels, and he gives her an exhortation. She then kisses his hand, 



ROMISH CEREMONIES. 535 

and then lies down prostrate before him, while the litany is chanted. The 
Prelate then having his Crosier, ends the Benediction ; and after a sprinkle of 
holy water, the candidate puts on her convent dress. 

The Veil, Ring, and Crown, are blessed after the same manner. The Nun 
then presents herself before the Prelate, singmg on her knee?, " Ancilla Chrisli 
sum, I am the servant of Christ." In that posture she receives the veil ; then 
the ring, upon the delivery of which the Prelate declares that she is married 
to Jesus Christ ; and lastly, he presents her " the crown of Virginity,^' when 
an anthem is chanted. An anathema is then denounced against all who shall 
seduce her to break her vows. The Offertory being ended, she gives a hghted 
taper to the Prelate, and afterward she receives the Mass Wafer. Those cere- 
monies having terminated, the Prelate enjoins upon the Abbess, " Take care 
to preserve pure and spotless those 3^oung women whom God has consecrated 
to himself!" and the same night they are initiated into all the impure and de- 
■ testable " mystery of iniquity. 

The history of Female Convents is a melancholy, but edifying comment 
upon the " spotless purity" of Roman Prelates and Abbesses ; and Roman 
Priests and Nuns. The most comprehensive and accurate description of Mon- 
asteries and Nunneries v/hich can be found in any book in the world, are 
those written by the Prophet Isaiah, and the Apostle John. Isaiah 13 : 21. 
" Wild beasts of the desert lie there ; and their houses are full of doleful crea- 
tures ; and owls dwell there ; and satyrs dance there." Revelation 18 : 2. 
" The hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." 
That such has been the abhorrent character of all female convents in past 
a^es ; that such is now the exact delineation of every existing monastic in- 
stitution ; and that such unavoidably must be the only true picture of the inte- 
rior of those "habitations of devils, " is as evident as the instinctive sensi- 
bilities, and the unalterable constitution of mankind. •->v^-^ 

The preceding articles in this Appendix develop some important facts. 

1. The " Taxatio Papalis" demonstrates, that the Romish community is "a 
great customhouse for sin." By no other body of men among mankind, of 
any age or nation, has the price for commuting the penalty and punishment of 
every species of crime been so plainly promulged — and by no other consocia- 
tion of men has it been the universal practice to teach the manner of perpe- 
trating the most loathsome crimes, that the sinner may be mulcted for hav- 
ing fulfilled his Priest's instmctions. 

2. The display of " Jesuitism" furnishes us with irresistible proof, that 
there is no possible -wickedness which the Roman Priests do not inculcate, 
encourage, and justify. 

3. The Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent," disclose modern 
Romanism in its authentic and boasted infallible attributes, and "damnable 
heresies." 

4. The " exact conformity of Popery with Paganism," includes one of the 
most instructive disclosures of the origin and principles of Romanism which 
latter times have furnished. It is not a little remarkable, that recent travel- 
lers have also discussed and exhibited the striking analogies and identity of 
the dehneations which were made by the heathen writers eighteen hundred 
years ago, and the living reahties of the nineteenth century in all parts of 
Italy, and especially in Rome. 

These disquisitions are corroborated by the comprehensive sunnnary of the 
principal " Romish Ceremonies," which eyince, that genuine Popery is noth- 
mg but a commingled mass of ignorance, idolatry, pollution, and priestcraft: 
equally at variance with scriptural truth and human welfare—an unmixed 
curse, with which the Arbiter of the universe has mysteriously permitted our 
world, during the last twelve hundred years, to be tormented. O ! pray for its 
extinction — O ! devote all evangelical energies to' expedite that long predicted 
consummation, when the accursed Babylon the Great shall experience that 
tremendous catastrophe to which it is doomed ; and when its pomp and its 

Eower, its wiles and its despotism, its delusions and its abominations, shall 
e remembered only to furnish the theme for general execration, or the sub- 
ject of that song of'triumph, when all in heaven and all on earth shall shout 
together, "Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Amen." 



If'?. 



INDEX. 



Abrogation of the Cup, 282 
Abrogation of the Moral Law, 300 
Absolution, 222, 228, 443, 478 
Absurdities of Transubstantiation, 268 
Acts of Councils, 397 
Adoration, 287 
Adoration of Saints, 232 
Adoration of the Host is Idolatry, 267, 

510 
Adoration of the Mass Wafer, 235 
Adoration of the Pope, 532 
Agbarus' Letter, 509 
Agnus Dei, 260 
Albigenses, 402, 407 
All Saints, 531 
All Souls. 531 
Ambarvalia, 527 
Ambition of Priests, 70 
Ancient LitanicvS, 281 
Ancient Missals, 275 
Angels, 230 
Antichrist, 49 

Antichristian Apostacies, 21 
Apocalypse, 58 
Apocrypna, 82 
Apostacy^ 220 
Apotheosis of the Dead, 260 
Appeals to the Pope, 132 
Appendages of the Papacy, 133 
Appendix, 439 
April Festivals, 529 
Artery Vocabulario, 330 
Ash Wednesday, 528 
Astrology, 448 
Asylums, 518 
August Festivals, 530 
Auricular Confession, 224, 307, 330, 382, 

525 
Authors, 51 

B. 
Babylonian Festivals, 326 
Babylonish Captivity, 143 
Baptism, 234, 470, 521 
Baptismal Efficacy, 226 
Baptism Essential, 226 
Baptism of Bells, 98 
Beast of Blasphemy, 37 
Beast with two Horns, 38 
Benediction of Bells, 534 
Benediction of Grave Yards, 526 
Benediction of Horses, 502 
Bwiefits of Historical Knowledge, 16 



Benefits of Redemption, 237 

Blasphemy, 448 

Blessed Bread, 524 

Blind Obedience, 312 

Books Proscribed, 378, 494 

Bull " In ccena Domini,'* 212, 525 

Burial, 526 

C. 
Calendar, 527 
Calumny, 364 
Canonical Satisfaction, 221 
Canonical Scriptures, 458 
Canonization of Saints, 232 
Canon Law, 376 
Canon of Scriptures, 84 
Canon of the Mass, 486 
Canons for Penance, 336 
Canons. 

Baptism, 470 

Communion, 485 

Council of Trent, 456 

Eucharist, 474 

Extreme Unction, 483 

Justification, 467 

Mass, 487 

Matrimony, 490 

Orders, 488 

Penance, 480 
Cardinal Points of Popery, 142 
Cardinals, 182 
Carnaval, 528 
Cases Reserved, 479 
Catalogue of Authors, 5 
Causes of the Papal Predominance, 160 
Cautilse for Mass Priests, 489 
Caveats for Mass Priests, 489 
Celibacy, 42, 79 
Centuries. 

I. 63 

II. 65 
in. 67 

IV. 71 

V. 80 

VI. 84 

VII. VIII. 89 
IX X 93 

XL* xii. xni. XIV. XV. loi 

Ceremonies of the Mass, 486, 522 
Character of Jesuitism, 349 
Choice of Drinks, 493 
Choice of Meats, 493 
Christianity and Popery Irreconcilable, 
255 



INDEX. 



637 



Chronological Table, 106 
Church Discipline, 78 
Communion in one kind, 81. 274, 483 
Commutation of Vows, 443 
Concealment, 448 
Conclusion, 433 
Confession, 82, 224, 476 
Confirmation, 236, 471, 522 
Conformity of Popery and Paganism, 
. 498 

Consecration of Symbols, 282 
Constantine, 71 
Constitutional Order, 355 
Constitutions of Pope Clement V. 376 
Contrition, 476 
Coronation of the Pope, 533 
Corporeal Presence, 94 
Corpus Christi, 530 
Corpus Juris Canonici, 201, 373 
Corruptions, 95 
Councils, 144, 154 

Basle, 196, 197 

Florence, 196 

Lateran, 196 

Trent, 196 
Creating the Creator, 288 
Creed of Faith, 457 
Creed of Pope Pius IV. 242 
Cross— sign, 78 
Cruelty of Popes, 177 
Crusades, 171 

D. 
Damnable Heresies of Popery, 219 
Dangers of Jesuitism, 370 
Debitum Conjugale, 343 
Deceivableness of Unrighteousness, 

300 
December Festivals, 531 
Decree of Confirmation, 497 
Decrees of the Council of Trent, 456 
Decretals, 201, 374 
Dedication of Mass Houses to Idols, 

258 
Defects in the Mass, 298 
Delusions of Popery, 162 
Dens' Theology, 341 
Depravity of tne Apostates, 34 
Difference between Baptism and Pen- 
ance, 476 
Dignity of Popes, 131 
Directory for Inquisitors, 377 
Discipline, 219 
Discipline Changed, 78 
Discords of the Apostates, 32 
Dispensations, 210, 302, 340, 443 
Dissimulation in Religion, 365 
Distinction of Meats, 78, 261 
Dominion of Roman Pontiffs, 131 
Dominion of the Beast, 43 
Drunken Woman, 372 
Dulia, 81,261 

E. 
Easter, 66, 529 
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 488 



Ecclesiastical Privileges, 318 

Ecclesiastical Supremacy, 157 

Edict of Nantz, 406, 408 

Effects of Confession, 310 

Efficacy of Baptism, 226 

Elevation of Symbols, 284 

Elizabeth of England, 419 

Ember Weeks, 528 

Episcopal Church, 253 

Errors concerning the Eucharist, 273 

Errors concerning the Pope, 150 

Errors concerning the Priesthood, 151 

Eucharist, 32, 86, 273, 471, 522 

Eucharist a Remembrancer, 279 

Eucharist for the Sick, 473 

Evangelical Holiness, 314 

Excommunication, 375, 525 

Exemptions of Priests, 135, 187, 318 

Exorcism, 245 

Extent of the Beast's Dominion, 43 

Extracts from Jesuit Authors, 44* 

Extravagants, 376 

Extreme Unction, 236, 482, 525 

F. 
Faith. 237 
Falsehood, 364 
False Miracles, 514 
False Witness, 448 
Fasts, 493 
Feast Days, 493 
Febra, 527 

February Festivals, 528 
Fees of the Pope's Chancery, 443 
Festivals, 67, 95, 234, 260, 312, 326, £27 
First Wo, 22 
Flagellants, 512 
Form of Mass Houses, 257 
Frauds, 517 

Frauds in Business, 366 
Friars, 182 

Fruits of Justification, 466 
Funerals, 526 

G. 
General Councils, 144 
Good Friday, 529 
Good Works, 224, 237 
Grave Yards Blessed, 526 
Greeks, 32 

H. 
Haughtiness of Popes, 177 
Henry III. of France, 413 
Henry IV. of France, 415 
Henry VIII. of England, 412 
Heresy, 372 
Heretical Pravity, 382 
Heretics, 373 
High Treason, 449 
Historical Illustrations, 424 
Historical Notices of Jesuitism, 841 
Historical Summary, 102 
Holy Water, 501 
Honors to Angels, 230 
Honors to Samts, 230, 486 
Horses Blessed, 502 



INDEX. 



Huguenots, 428 iLibeilatiei, 220 

Hyperdulia, 260 i Liberty of the Press, 355 

I. ! Licentiousness, 448, 449 

Identity of Heathen and An tichristian Licentiousness of Nuns, 324 



Rome, 159 
Idolatry, 29, 448 
Idols' Wardrobes, 505 
Ignorance, 30, 96 
Images, 233, 493 
Image Worship, 33, 78, 93, 505 
Immolation of Christ, 275 
Immorality of Jesuitism, 363 
Immorality of Romanism, 300 
Impiety of Jesuitism, 360 

ImportanceofEcclesiastical History, 14 MarcK Festivals, 528 
Impossibility of Transubstantiation,268.Marianity, 81 



Lictisternia, 527 

i Litany, 82 

iLiterae Apostolicae, 396 

I Liturgies, 281 

I Lord's Supper, 234 

jLoretto, 517 

■ Lying, 448 

: Lying Wonders of Popery, 256 

i M. 

Magic, 448 



In Coena Domini, 212, 525 

Incense, 78, 500 

Increase of the Pope's Power, 153 

Index of Prohibited Books, 494 

Indulgences, 86, 223, 237, 303, 492 

InfallibiUty, 137, 145, 194, 201 

Infamy of the Roman Priesthood, 96 

Infanticide, 369 

Iniquity by Law, 305 . 

Inquisitor's Directory, 377 

Institutes of Canon Law, 376 ! 

Intellectual Absurdities of Transub- 

stantiation, 268 
Intercession of Christ, 234 
Intercession of Martyrs, 229 
Interference of Priests, 152 
Introductory, 21 
Investitures, 177 
Invocation of Angels, 230 
Invocation of Saints, 78, 227, 230 
Irish Massacre, 403 
Irreligion, 448 

James I. of England, 420 

Januarius' Blood, 517 

January Festivals, 528 

Jesuitism, 341, 446 

Jesuitism and Liberty Irreconcilable, 

357 
Jesuit Morality, 359 
Jesuit's Oath of Secrecy, 186 
Jubilee, 237 

Judges' Prevarication, 448 
July Festivals, 530 
June Festivals, 530 
Justification, 237, 461 

K. 
Kneeling at Mass, 285, 524 
Kissing the Pope's Foot, 519 

L. 
Lamps in Mass Houses, 502 
Latin Extracts Translated, 124 
Latin Language, 283 
Latins, 32 
Latria, 81, 285 
Laws against Heresy, 372 
Legends, 70, 315 
Lent, 66, 528 



Mariolatry, 81 
Marriage, 527 
Marriage Prohibited, 74 
Martyrs' Intercession, 227 
Mass, 235, 276, 485, 522 
Massacres. 

Bezieres, 429 

Council of Trent, 425 

Huguenots, 428 

Merindol and Cabrieres, 42& 

Netherlands, 424, 428 

Poland, 427 

Waldenses, 426 
Masses for the Dead, 95 
Masses in Honour of Saints, 486 
Masses in the Vulgar Tongue, 487 
Mass Houses, 257 

Mass Houses Dedicated to Idols. 258 
Matrimonial Dispensations, 443 
Matrimony, 236, 335, 490 
May Festivals, 529 
Mediation of Christ, 234 
Mendicant Friars, 182, 519 
Merit of Good Works, 224 
Methodist Church, 253 
Missals, 275 
Mohammedism, 22 
Monachism, 82, 317 
Monastic Orders, 86, 491 
Monastic Possessions, 190 \ 

Monastic System, 78, 303 
Monks, 182 

Moral Influence of Monachism, 328 
Morality of the Jesuits, 359 
Mother of God, 95 
Murder, 368, 449 
Mystery of Iniquity, 345 
Mystery of Providence, 53 

N. 
Notices of Jesuitism, 341 
November Festivals, 531 
Novena, 531 
Nudipedalia, 527 
Number of Sacraments. 234 
Number " Six Hundred, Three Score 

and Six," 39 
Nuns. 79, 182 
Nuns' Reception, 534 



INDEX. 



539 



o. 

Oath of Popish Priests, 184 

Oath of Secrecy, 186 

Oaths of Popish Prelates, 184 

Oaths Violated, 301 

Obedience to the Roman Court, 128 

Objections to Councils, 164 

Objections to Romanism, 163 

October Festivals, 531 

Offerings, 503 

Opus Operatum, 234 

Ordeals of Fire and Water, 98 

Orders, 236, 488, 519 

Orders a Sacrament, 488 

Ordination, 488 

Original Sin, 459 

Origin of the Popedom, 61 

P. 
Pagan Ceremonies, 76 
Paganism and Popery, 498 
Pagan Superstitions, 256 
Palm Sunday, 529 
Papacy a Monarchy, 131 
Papal Bulls, 386 
Papal Canons, 105 
Papal Exactions, 170 
Papal Ferocity, 212 
Papal Grandeur, 102 
Papal Infallibility, 137, 194, 201 
Papal Interdicts, 176 
Papal Jurisdiction, 133 
Papal Power, 102, 101 
Papal Rescripts, 386 
Papal Supremacy, 76, 138, 201 
Papal Traditions, 191 
Papal Usurpations, 87, 99 
Pardons of Jubilee, 237 
Parricide 449 
Penance,' 41, 233, 235, 332, 336, 342, 475, 

525 
Penitentiary Canons, 441 
Perjury, 366, 448 
Persecutions, 399 
Perseverance, 465 
Pervigilia, 527 
Philosophical Sin, 448 
Pilgrimages, 78, 233 
Pontifical Hierarchy, 127, 145 
Pope Adored, 532 
Pope Crowned, 533 
Pope Joan, 91 
Pope Pius IV.'s Creed, 242 
Popery and Paganism, 498 
Popery Derogatory to the Glory of 

Christ, 241 
Popery in the Dark Ages, 50 
Popes. 

Adrian VI. 393 

Alexander IV. 390 

Boniface VIII. 375 

Calixtus III. 391 

Clement IV. 390 

Clement V. 391 



Clement VII. 393 

Gregory IX. 387 

Gregory XI. 391 

Honorius IV. 390 

Innocent II. 387 

Innocent IV. 388 

Innocent VIII. 391 

John XXII. 391 

Juhus III. 394 

Leo X. 392 

Martin V. 391 

Nicholas IV. 390 

Paul III. 393 

Paul IV. 394 

Pius 11. 391 

Pius IV. 394 

Pius V. 394 

Urban IV. 390 
Pope's Fees, 443 

Pope's Temporal Power, 136, 168 
Popes were Heretics, 143 . 
Popes were Sinners, 143 
Popish Exorcism, 245 
Popish Frauds, 517 
Popish Mummery, 314 
Popish Murders, 311 
Popish Temples, 257 
Power of the Beast, 47 
Practical Absurdities of Transubstan- 

tiation, 273 
Prayers for the Dead, 78 
Prayers to Saints, 85 
Presbyterian Church, 253 
Prevarication of Judges, 448 
Predictions of Scripture, 61 
Preface, 13 
Prelates, 182 
Prelate's Oath, 184 
Prelatical Power, 74 
Preservation of the Scriptures, M 
Priesthood of the New Law, 488 
Priestly Celibacy, 99, 179 
Priestly Interference, 134 
Priests, 182 
Priest's Oath, 184 
Principles of the Papacy, 127 
Private Masses, 277 
Probabilism, 448 
Probable Opinions, 362 
Proceedings of Jesuitism, 349 
Procession of Corpus Christi, 530 
Processions, 74, 531 
Profligacy of Monks, 324 
Progress of Mohammedism, 26 
Progress of the Popedom, 61 
Prohibited Books, 494 
Prohibition of Marriage, 96 
Prophecies concerning ropery, 36 
Proscribed Books, 378 
Protestants in France, 421 
Purgatory, 41, 74, 100, 225, 231, 4n 

Qusstieos at Confession, 209, 39% 8t 



540 



INDEX 



R. 

Real Presence, 81, 471 

Reception of Nuns, 534 

Reformation, 52 

Reformed Dutch Church, 254 

Regicide, 369, 449 

ReUcs, 28, 29, 233, 493, 515, 532 

Remembrance of Christ's Death, 279 

Reservation of Cases, 479 

Revenues of Roman Priests, 321 

Ritual Formulapo, 331 

RobigaUa, 527 

Roman Hierarchy, 145 

Romanism Contrary to the Design of 
the Gospel, 239 

Roman Penitential, 810 

Romish Ceremonies, 247, 521 

Romish Doctrines, 100 

Romish Frauds. 517 

Romish Legends, 315 

Romulus, 517 

S. 

Sacrament in one kind, 235 * 

Sacraments, 234, 469, 521 

Sacraments Indehble, 234 

Sacr^ents not Seals, 234 

Sacrificaii, 220 

Sacrifice of the Mass, 279 

Sacrifices, 258 

Sacrilege, 448 

Sanctity of Creatures, 262 

Sanctum Sanctorum, 262 

Satisfaction for Sin, 227, 479 

Schism between the Greeks and La- 
tins, 34 

Scriptures Canonical, 458 

Scriptures Preserved, 56 

Seals, 58 

Second Wo, 24 

Secrecy, 448 

Secret Compensation, 445 

September Festivals, 530 

Seven Orders, 483 

Shrovetide, 523 

Sign of the Cross, 78 

Simony, 443 

Sin, Original, 459 

Solitary Masses, 275 

Statues of Idols, 506 

Strife between the Prelates of Rome 
and Constantinople, 88 

Strong Delusion of Popery, 256 

Structure of the Apocalypse, 58 

Study of Ecclesiastical History, 14 

Study of the Scriptures, 13 

Style of Theologians, 77 

Subjection of Prelates to the Emperor, 
83 , 

Subjection of the People ^t^PgP^i 

Suicide, 449 D O O 

Superstitions, 28, 63, 77 
Superstitions of Mass Houses, 258 
Snpremacy of the Pope, 41, 127, 201 



T. 

Table of Popery, 106 

Taxae Camerae, 307 

Taxalio Papalis, 440 

Tax-Book of the Pope, 307 

Temporal Supremacy of the Pope, 166, 

Theft, 366, 443 

Thurificati, 220 

Traditions, 80, 191, 220 

Translation of Bodies, 95 

Translation of Latin Extracts, 124 

Transubstantiation, 41, 100, 263, 
471 

Transubstantiation Contrary to Evan- 
gelical Truth, 263 

Transubstantiation Impossible, 268 

Transubstantiation Incredible, 265 

Transubstantiation Self- contradictory, 
264 

Transubstantiation Unknown to the 
Primitive Ages, 265 

Treason, 410, 449 

Trumpets, 58 

Turks, 24 

Two Witnesses, 91 



U. 

Unbloodv Sacrifice, 258 

Unction, 236, 432, 525, 526 

Unity of the Apocalypse, 58 

Unity of the Jesuits, 447 

Unity of the Popedom, 197 

Universal Bishop, 92 

Use of the Latin Language, 90, 283 

V. 

Veneration of Relics, 78, 493 

Veneration of Saints, 493 

Veneration of the Sacrament, 473 

Veronica's Handkerchief, 509 

Vials, 59 

Viaticum, 524 

Vinaha, 527 ' 

Violation of Treaties, 300 

Virgin Mary, 234 

Votive Gifts, 503 

Vulgar Tongue, 487 

W. 

Wardrobes for Idols, 505 

Wars, 409 

Wax Tapers, 78, 502 

Water Mixed with Wine, 486 

Whippers, 512 

Whitsuntide, 530 

WilUam Nassau, of Orange, 417 

Will- Worship, 62 

Witnesses in Sackcloth, 91 

Working of Satan, 345 

Work s^ Satisfaction, 480 

Worship of Images, 41, 91 

Worship of the Mother of God, 95 

Worship of the Sacrament, 473 

Wo the First, 22 

,Wo the Second, 24 



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